Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Quotes

Nigerian writer (born 1977)

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (; born 15 September 1977) is a Nigerian writer, whose works include fiction, nonfiction, and lectures. She is widely recognised as a central figure in postcolonial feminist literature. Born into an Igbo family in Enugu, Nigeria, Adichie was educated at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka, where she studied medicine for a year and half. She left Nigeria at the age of 19 to study in the United States at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and went on to study at: Eastern Connecticut State University, Johns Hopkins University, and Yale University in the U.S. Many of Adichie's novels are set in Nsukka, where she grew up. She started writing during her university education. She first wrote Decisions (1997), a poetry collection, followed by a play, For Love of Biafra (1998). She achieved early success with her debut novel, Purple Hibiscus. Adichie has written many works and has cited Chinua Achebe and Buchi Emecheta as inspirations. Her writing style juxtaposes Western and African influences, with particular influence from Igbo culture. Most of her works explore the themes of religion, immigration, gender and culture. Adichie is a public speaker who has spoken at many commencement ceremonies, including at Williams College (2017), Harvard University (2018), and the American University (2019). She has also delivered Ted Talks, among them, "The Danger of a Single Story" (2009) and "We Should All Be Feminists" (2012). Part of the latter was featured by American singer Beyoncé in her song, as well as being featured on a T-shirt by Dior in 2016. Adichie's awards and honours include academic and literary prizes, fellowships, grants, honorary degrees, and other high recognition, such as a MacArthur Fellowship in 2008 and induction into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017.

From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Birth Name: Ngozi Grace Adichie

Alternative Names: Adichie • Ngozi Adichie • Chimamanda Adichie

From Wikidata (CC0)

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I felt ragged and hopeless, high on my desperation. I had already ripped up my dignity, so I might as well scatter the pieces.

I felt light from relief, weightless, unburdened.

How you imagine something will be is always worse than how it actually ends up being,

Masculinity is a hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage.

Her silence bruised the air between us.

It was something like pain and different from pain.

"I think I should leave. Is that okay?” he asked as though he needed my permission to abandon me. He would kill you, but he would do it courteously.

Bear it, that is what it means to be a woman...

...my point is that the only authentic identity for the African is the tribe...I am Nigerian because a white man created Nigeria and gave me that identity. I am black because the white man constructed black to be as different as possible from his white. But I was Igbo before the white man came.

Something was growing inside me, alien, uninvited, and it felt like an infestation.

He rolled his eyes in a kind of disbelieving amusement. “What, the single friend will seduce the husband, or the single friend will make the wife want to be single again?

They learned instead from mainstream pornography, where women were always shaved smooth and never had periods, and so they became men who thought the contrived histrionics onscreen were How Things Were Done.

The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are. Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn't have the weight of gender expectations.

No matter who we are, we dream.

I thought the Igwe was supposed to stay at his place and receive guests. I didn’t know he visits people’s homes,’ Amaka said, as we went downstairs. ‘I guess that’s because your father is a Big Man.’

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Quotes

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