Do you know that it was on this day in history that Chimamanda Adichie, award-winning novelist, feminist and speaker was born?
Connect Nigeria wishes this phenomenal woman a happy birthday! We’ll celebrate her by reviewing some inspiring statements she has made in her interactions with the world, in her books and in her speeches.
In her interactions with the world:
1. “I think you travel to search and you come back home to find yourself there.”
2. “Of course I am not worried about intimidating men. The type of man who will be intimidated by me is exactly the type of man I have no interest in.”
3. “Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity.”
4. “Show a people as one thing, only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.”
5. “We do not just risk repeating history if we sweep it under the carpet, we also risk being myopic about our present.”
6. “Love is the most important. The most necessary human emotion. Not just romantic love. Love. The ability of human beings to connect.”
7. “Today, we live in a vastly different world. The person more qualified to lead is not the physically stronger person. It is the more intelligent, the more knowledgeable, the more creative, more innovative. And there are no hormones for those attributes. A man is as likely as a woman to be intelligent, innovative, creative. We have evolved. But our ideas of gender have not evolved very much.”
8. “The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we ‘should’ be rather than recognizing how we are.”
9. “Gender is not an easy conversation to have. It makes people uncomfortable, sometimes even irritable. Both men and women are resistant to talk about gender, or are quick to dismiss the problems of gender. Because thinking of changing the status quo is always uncomfortable.”
10. “The problem with stereotypes is not because they are untrue, its because they are incomplete; they make one story the only story.”
From her book “Purple Hibiscus”
1. “Being defiant can be a good thing sometimes,” Aunty Ifeoma said. “Defiance is like marijuana – it is not a bad thing when it is used right.”
2. “People have crushes on priests all the time, you know. It’s exciting to have to deal with God as a rival.”
3. “Papa sat down at the table and poured his tea from the china tea set with pink flowers on the edges. I waited for him to ask Jaja and me to take a sip, as he always did. A love sip, he called it, because you shared the little things you loved with the people you love.”
4. “The white missionaries brought us their god,” Amaka was saying. “Which was the same colour as them, worshiped in their language and packaged in the boxes they made. Now that we take their god back to them, shouldn’t we at least repackage it?”
5. “There are people, she once wrote, who think that we cannot rule ourselves because the few times we tried, we failed, as if all the others who rule themselves today got it right the first time. It is like telling a crawling baby who tries to walk, and then falls back on his buttocks, to stay there. As if the adults walking past him did not all crawl, once.”
From her book, “Half of a Yellow Sun”
1. “The real tragedy of our postcolonial world is not that the majority of people had no say in whether or not they wanted this new world; rather, it is that the majority have not been given the tools to negotiate this new world.”
2. “Is love this misguided need to have you beside me most of the time? Is love this safety I feel in our silences? Is it this belonging, this completeness?”
3. “There are two answers to the things they will teach you about our land: the real answer and the answer you give in school to pass. You must read books and learn both answers.”
4.“Perhaps he was not a true writer after all. He had read somewhere that, for true writers, nothing was more important than their art, not even love.”
5. “You can’t write a script in your mind and then force yourself to follow it. You have to let yourself be, Richard,” she said quietly.
From her book, “The Thing Around Your Neck”
1. “She imagines the cocoa brown of Nnedi’s eyes lighting up, her lips moving quickly, explaining that riots do not happen in a vacuum, that religion and ethnicity are often politicized because the ruler is safe if the hungry ruled are killing one another.”
2. “She could not complain about not having shoes when the person she was talking to had no legs.”
3. “The trick was to understand America, to know that America was give-and-take. You gave up a lot but you gained a lot, too.”
4. “Is it a good life, Daddy?” Nkiru has taken to asking lately on the phone, with that faint, vaguely troubling American accent. It is not good or bad, I tell her, it is simply mine. And that is what matters.”
We can go on and on but I think it is safe to say you agree with us that this incredibly smart, beautiful and talented woman – who has given us nuggets of wisdom that will stand the test of time – is worth celebrating.
We celebrate you, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Happy birthday!
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This article was first published on 15th September 2015
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