I was at the London Southbank Centre in 2009 where she read excerpts from the then unreleased The Thing Around Your Neck in her powerful, regal tones, uncorrupted by a fake foreign accent. She was by far the most intriguing of the ladies reading from their works up on that stage, and I will be eternally disappointed that I was unable to make it to her reading of Americanah at the same venue a few weeks ago.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The way she captures the
Nigerian identity today, the nuances and pretences and false beliefs and hopes
of our parents, ourselves and our society, of how strong-minded, globally
connected and aspiring Nigerians grapple with embracing our broken motherland
despite the allure of the US, which represents both greener pastures and
a lesson in self-awareness that leaves us
straddling between two cultures, neither of which fully satisfy.
Her heroines are epic: saturnine, brooding, melancholy, passive aggressive, intensely cerebral women who quietly bear the pressure they're under, until the day they snap and walk away from what is supposedly every Nigerian woman's dream: the good but uniquely flawed man, the dream job/opportunity that eats away at your soul, the chance to live or stay in America but betray yourself.
She is the voice of the upwardly mobile
Nigerian today, just like Chinua Achebe (their names will forever be linked in
reviews and editorials) was the voice of his generation. The late great said of
her: Her heroines are epic: saturnine, brooding, melancholy, passive aggressive, intensely cerebral women who quietly bear the pressure they're under, until the day they snap and walk away from what is supposedly every Nigerian woman's dream: the good but uniquely flawed man, the dream job/opportunity that eats away at your soul, the chance to live or stay in America but betray yourself.
“We do not usually associate wisdom with beginners, but here is a new writer endowed with the gift of ancient storytellers. [She] knows what is at stake, and what to do about it. She is fearless.”
He is spot on. It must be so fulfilling for Adichie to have someone so worthyunderstand her work so well. Her poise – one interviewer described her as ‘contained’- is obvious and her sense of self is empowering.
Yet I ran away from meeting her. The first
time was after the book reading at London Southbank Centre, where I left
afterwards instead of lingering behind to shake the hand of the woman ‘endowed with the gift of ancient storytellers.’
Then during another event at an arts venue near Clapham Junction station a
year or so later where she did a book signing afterwards (I have a recording of
her talk on my phone) I’d taken my copies of her books for her to sign, but I
could not face her. A friend had to take it to her for her to sign for me,
whilst I literally ran away to a corner of the auditorium and hid. I'm not entirely sure why.
My friends
tried to physically pull me to where she was but I refused to see her.
So she signed it, plus, Plus! she spelt my name right. A name that
is usually spelt with two Ls but mine is with one L, and many don’t know that, but
she did. That confirmed to me that we were kindred spirits. Just like Achebe ‘got’ her, she got me, and I get
her.
Adichie with her second book, Half of a Yellow Sun which won the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction
As a fellow writer and commentator on
race and belonging, her works and her words in the many interviews I’ve read of
hers are what mine would be. Her thoughts on the poor reading culture in
Nigeria and her efforts to open a library and literary centres around Nigeria are my thoughts
and desires. Her view on ‘The Dangers of the Single Story,’ which she spoke
about so eloquently during the now well-known TED Talks is exactly how I feel about the media when it gives
only one view of a place or a people, and the ripple effect of not knowing the
full story.
I used her words as part of my Masters
dissertation, mostly because it matched my subject of study and also
because I loved what she said and how she said it. Listen
for yourself here.Then there is a subject she espouses on at length in much of her writing, especially in her latest book Americanah: her love for natural hair, something I too feel very strongly about.
Adichie and her natural hair
But my natural hair journey did not
begin with any strong notion of expressing my Africanness by eschewing the false
notion of beauty that meant having straight long hair sewn into mine (I’ve
never sewn a weave into my hair in my life) or the fallacy of
relaxing my hair straight by burning away its natural curls. But six years ago I
decided against spending £60 every month to 'fix' my hair and spending six hours in a chair getting it fixed, so I simply stopped relaxing it and waited for my own
hair to grow long enough so I could cut off the relaxed ends. Thankfully my hair is easy to comb out, but the early stages of having a boyish short cut was challenging until it grew long enough to style, although sadly it never grew as long as it once was. Now in Nigeria I get compliments by women who wish they could ‘go natural’ but can’t because of their receding hairline resulting from too many tight braids or because their natural hair is too tough. Now I love my hair; it’s cheaper to manage and takes little time to do up in the morning. It’s how God created it and its texture is just the way He wanted it to be. Fulani women are usually less likely than other Nigerian women to wear weaves anyway, because their hair is usually longer and softer with finer curls, and also because they mostly cover it up and are not under pressure to show it off in different styles. This in itself is a shame, i.e. the women with the loveliest hair are the ones that cover it up.
And of course Adichie understands
the importance of Black women freeing themselves from the pressure of
wearing synthetic or another woman’s hair, which they deem more beautiful
than their own. She said:
“As you can see, I have natural, negro hair, free from relaxers and things... From when I was three years old I already had the idea that straight hair was beautiful and my hair was ugly. But then when I went to America, I suddenly found out I was Black! Suddenly I started thinking, why do I want my hair to look like a white girls’ hair? This is absurd.”Then she said:
"My hair is in tiny cornrows; I have a big ponytail on the top of my head. I quite like it. It is natural. I am a bit of a fundamentalist when it comes to black women's hair. Hair is hair – yet also it's about larger questions: self-acceptance, insecurity and what the world tells you is beautiful. For many black women, the idea of wearing their hair naturally is unbearable."In Americanah, Adichie describes her main character Ifemelu getting her hair relaxed:
“She left the salon almost mournfully; while the hairdresser had flat-ironed the ends, the smell of burning, of something organic dying which should not have died, had made her feel a sense of loss.”I was also happy to hear that Adichie is now married to a fellow Igbo doctor based in America. I’m a traditionalist, so no matter how great a woman’s achievements are and no matter how much I admire them, I always feel sad for them if they are unmarried and childless. Like Condoleeza Rice, the former US Secretary of state who got her PhD aged 26, is an accomplished pianist and speaks English, Russian, French, Spanish and German fluently, but is childless and single. Or Oprah Winfrey, who I adore and was bereaved when her show ended, and loved her even more after watching a documentary about the OWLAG school for girls she opened in South Africa. Yet I feel she is incomplete for never having married or raised her own kids. Although in her case (and probably Rice’s too) she might not have achieved so much if she were a housewife.
But marriage seems to have added nothing to Adichie: she was whole since writing Half of a Yellow Sun. After reading her first novel Purple Hibiscus, I could see the writer emerging, but by Yellow Sun Adichie had arrived. And she remains in a state of ‘arrival’ and will continue to be a fully fledged, composed and confident writer.
After The Thing Around Your Neck, I waited for more. Then forgot
that I was waiting. Then I heard the news last week that her latest novel will
be out in a couple of weeks (Where was I?? I’ve dropped the ball on my Adichie-watch. In the UK I googled her endlessly and had read
every bit of her online writing and interviews up until a certain point) and I was
elated.
The premise of Americanah, of two
high-school sweethearts in Nigeria finding themselves in different continents,
one in US the other in UK and their resulting experiences of race, employment,
relationships abroad, identity etc has gotten me so excited. I can’t wait to
read it. 
But one thing Adichie said encapsulated my
feelings, but in the opposite way to how she meant it:
“I like America but it’s not mine and it never will be. I don’t really have a life there. I travel and I speak and I sit in my study trying to write, but in Nigeria I have a life. I go out, I have friends, I feel emotionally invested in what’s happening.”
This.
This is how I feel, but about the UK. I like Nigeria but it’s not mine. Alas, dear Adichie, this is where we
disagree. Where Nigeria is home for you and the West is a sojourn, I feel the
opposite. But we’re still related you and I. We still share an understanding of
the world and an appreciation of the important things that make us African
women in a globalised world. I love your audacity to write about what’s
real to you, not what will bring you money. You speak for all of us and say it with maturity and knowing and humour and power.
Long may your pen continue to write. We may have lost Achebe, the father of African writing but we still have
you, a daughter of today’s Africa who we can claim for ourselves. Write and write until you can write no more, because
for every word you write there are many like me who devour them with
relish.
Perhaps one day I will overcome my innate Fulani
shyness and come face to face with you. I might cry, I might laugh, I might stare at you motionless and remain mute, coming off as aloof when
inside I’m dancing. But whether I meet you in person or not, I will
continue to meet you in your books.
Americanah here I come!
UPDATE
I've now read Americanah, and it is all I expected and so much more. I absolutely loved it! My review will be up soon once I've had time to fully digest it and formulate a worthy articulation of its brilliance and particular resonance with me on so many levels.
