“She’s an award-winning novelist, a TED talk sensation and Beyoncé’s favorite feminist. But Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has many more stories to tell.” What a way to start an article. The ‘Americanah’ author is featured in next month’s issue of Vogue – more after the click.
One of our favorites, New York Times Best Selling Author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, is featured in the April issue of Vogue UK mag and not only does she look great in her photos, but the article itself is so insightful and honest (the author said she wasn’t really feelin’ the garri she tried, but she dug the moin moin lol). Snippets from the full interview plus photos, below:
On her now famous 2013 TED talk:
She said yes to the 2013 TED invitation mainly because it was organised by her brother, Chuks, who works in information technology and development, and she wanted to help him out. “But I thought, I don’t have anything to talk about. I’m not the kind of person who can manufacture things when I don’t care deeply about them. But my brother said, well, there is this one thing you give us endless lectures about…” A mock-serious look crosses her face. “Because it’s known in my family, you don’t want to demean women in my presence! And I knew this wasn’t a comfortable subject, particularly for the people I was addressing, an African audience.
“I was still writing it when I went up to speak, and afterwards, clearly people had listened, clearly people felt strongly about it – but I let it go. So they put it online, and only then I heard about people using it in their classes, about people arguing about it at work and school.”
Her views on celebrity, and the Beyonce collaboration:
The collaboration is not something Adichie has discussed much, wary that too much talk of pop music would shift the focus away from what she cares about. “I am a person who writes and tells stories. That’s what I want to talk about. There’s an obsession with celebrity that I have never had. But the one thing I will say is that I really do think Beyoncé is a force for good, as much as celebrity things go. I know there has been lot of talk in the past year about how feminism is ‘cool’ now, but I think if we are honest, it’s not a subject that’s easy. She didn’t have to do this, she could have taken on, I don’t know, world peace. Or nothing at all. And I realise that so many young people in our celebrity-obsessed world, well, suddenly they are thinking about this. And that’s a wonderful thing. So I don’t have any reservations about having said yes.”
On Chimamanda’s heros:
To spend time in Lagos with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, to stand on the shore of the lagoon as she poses, laughing, for Vogue‘s photographer, to drive through the city’s crowded roads, to share a drink with her and her friends, was very special. But for all her fame and success, she remains down-to-earth. When I ask her if she sees herself as a feminist heroine, she looks puzzled. Her heroines, she says, are “the nameless women in the market, who are holding their families together. They are traders and their husbands are out drinking somewhere… It’s those women I admire. I am full of admiration for them.”
Read the full article, written by Erica Wagner, here at Vogue.
Photo Credit: Akintunde Akinleye
What say you – did you enjoy the article?
