Transcription
This presentation will cover the life of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who is accomplished and her contributions to the feminist movement. She is a scholar and a very prominent Nigerian writer, where a few of her books have film adaptations.
The DJ was born in Enugu, Nigeria on September 15, 1977. Both of her parents worked at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where her mother was the first female registrar and her father was a professor, prompting her to grow up on campus.
The DJ's formal education began here with her studying Medicine and Pharmacy for a year until she transferred to the United States. She enrolled in Drexel University in Philadelphia while pursuing a Communications and Political Science degree. She finished her bachelor's degree in Windham, Connecticut at Eastern Connecticut State University in 2001 to be close to her sister, who ran a medical practice in that area.
Adichie completed her master's degree in Creative Writing in Maryland at Johns Hopkins University in 2003. By 2008, she had attended Yale University and received a master's degree in African Studies.
In 2009, Adichie married Nigerian Dr. Ivara Asaga. They had a daughter together in 2016, who they've mostly kept private. Adichie felt there was the stigma to perform pregnancy, so to avoid judgment, she decided to keep the pregnancy a secret, not just from the media, but some friends and family as well.
The DJ's primary focus in feminism is the equality of men and women and the diminishment of gender roles. She wants to live in a world where toxic masculinity is non-existent and anyone can be unapologetically feminine. I thought these three quotes from Adichie really encompass her beliefs: "We make girls feel as being born female, they're already guilty of something." "The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are." "I want to be respected in all of my femaleness because I deserve to be."
Purple Hibiscus was Adichie's first novel and was published in 2003. It focuses on a Nigerian family looking for freedom from tyranny. There are major concepts of feminism like the tendency of men to dehumanize women and the overall interpretation of African feminism. DJ focuses on the ideal African woman, which is someone who is silent, victimized, brutalized, and is seen as a good woman who tolerates men. The main character, Kambili, is a 15-year-old girl who faces all of these issues, in particular from her father. But the idea of radical feminism is introduced into the novel and used to gain freedom by resorting to violence. DJ illustrates the flow between African and radical feminism and how even wishing to stay peaceful, you can succumb to the violence, but they can also interlock and complement one another when fighting dehumanization.
Dear Ijeawele, a Feminist Manifesto in 15 Suggestions, was published in 2017. This book was written for a friend when a teacher was asked how to raise a feminist daughter. At first, she was overwhelmed with the idea of writing something as such, but found it much easier when preparing for her own daughter and thinking back on her own life experiences. If DJ argues that any issue that stems from feminism is rooted at birth, not through education or domestic violence. She discusses the major effects that parents have on their own children, whether that's through the things they specifically say to them or through the environments they situate their children in. DJ's 15 suggestions are: Be beautiful, person, both parents work together, reduce gender roles, stop "feminazi" (which is when men believe they are superior but should be expected to treat women well), teach children to love books, question language, never speak of marriage as an achievement, reject likability, identity, appearance, questioning culture, sex, romance, oppression, and difference.
We Should All Be Feminists was published in 2014. It was written because of the reception of Adichie's viral Ted Talk in 2012 with the same name. The second verse of Beyoncé's "Flawless" off of her self-titled album from 2014 is entirely sampled from Adichie's lecture. As of 2015, the book was even distributed to every 16-year-old in Sweden. People fell in love with Adichie's message for equality for both men and women and not to be constrained by gender roles. She has a primary focus on how gender is taught to children and how it is a tool of patriarchal control, but she also discusses what feminism means to her and her Nigerian culture, like how feminism is unafrican, and discussing defying stereotypes like "you hate men" or "you hate bras." DJ defines feminism in the lecture as "a man or a woman who says, 'Yes, there's a problem with gender as it is today, and we must fix it. We must do better.'"
Adichie has won many awards and honors for her academics, literature work, and films, but these are a few notable ones: Purple Hibiscus won the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 2005 for Best First Book. Half of a Yellow Sun won the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction in 2007. Americanah won the fiction category of the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2013. "The Thing Around Your Neck" won the Mary McCarthy Award of Bard College in 2017, the PEN Pinter Prize in 2018, and the Hurston Wright Foundation's North Star Award in 2021.