12 July 2009
analysis
Lagos — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born September 15, 1977 in the town of Enugu in Nigeria, but grew up in the University town of Nsukka. While she was growing up, her father was a professor of statistics at the University, and her mother was also employed there as the university registrar.
Her fascination with writing was seemingly born with her; she began writing and illustrating stories for her mother when she was six years old. By the time she was twenty-one she had published a collection of poems and a play.
At the age of 19, she left Nigeria and moved to the United States. After studying at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Chimamanda transferred to Eastern Connecticut State University to live closer to her sister; who had a medical practice in Coventry (now in Mansfield, Ct), and to continue studying communications and political science.
She got her university degree from Eastern, where she graduated summa cum laude in 2001. She also completed a master's degree in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. She is now pursuing an MA in African Studies at Yale University. Chimamanda is a 2008 MacArthur Fellow. She was a Visiting Writer at Wesleyan University, in 2008, and participated in Wesleyan's Distinguished Writers Series.
Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus, was published in 2003 and won the Best First Book award in the 2005 Commonwealth Writers' Prize.
The novel's religious themes arise out of Adichie's lifelong journey toward spiritual understanding. She attended mass and Benediction every Sunday, became obsessed with "the drama of it all: the incense, the vibrant singing in Latin, the big hugs after the services Until about 19 I was in my intense period of God searching. I read the writings of St Augustine and fat books about Church history. I was always asking questions. I wanted to know why some people had car accidents and some didn't. I wanted to capture God in a bottle."
Adichie says that Purple Hibiscus was partly born out of homesickness for Nigeria. "I was living in Connecticut and hadn't been back to Nigeria for four years. I was intensely homesick. It was winter here and terribly cold. I looked out and saw this blanket of white and thought: 'I want home.'" Despite her physical distance from Nigeria, writing kept her imaginative connection with home alive.
Her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, named after the flag of the short-lived Biafran nation, is set before and during the Biafran War. It was published by Knopf/Anchor in 2006 and was awarded the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction.
Her third book is a collection of short stories titled The Thing Around Your Neck and was published in April 2009 by Fourth Estate in the UK and Knopf in the US
I didn't ever consciously decide to pursue writing. I've been writing since I was old enough to spell, and just sitting down and writing made me feel incredibly fulfilled. -
Her awareness of Nigerian ethnic issues is prominent in her fiction, as are the challenges which women in Africa face. Perhaps it is not surprising that Adichie's voice is being compared to Chinua Achebe, her literary hero, author of her favorite novel, Arrow of God, and the classic Things Fall Apart.
Adichie and Achebe share more than their Nigerian heritage. Although they are separated by nearly fifty years, they are both concerned, Adichie says, with "the legacies of colonialism...We both celebrate Igbo culture in its magnificent ordinariness. We both portray the complexities of Christianity in Nigeria. We are both impatient with the inept leadership in Nigeria and with the way we Nigerians excuse corruption and never demand the best of ourselves and our leaders." Recently, Adichie received an email from her idol's son telling her that Achebe had read and admired Purple Hibiscus. "My idol was telling me I was doing a good job. I was so ecstatic. I went slightly crazy."
Her most notable work is perhaps Half of A Yellow Sun (published in 2006 by Knopf/Anchor) which won her the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction. Set in Biafra before and during the Biafran war, the novel is a powerful work of fiction. Her first novel - Purple Hibiscus (published in 2003) - won her recognition as Best First Book in 2005 for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. The novel is heartbreaking and beautifully written.
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