SHE IS A WRITER

 

  SHE IS A WRITER

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Nigeria in 1977. She is the author of three novels, Purple Hibiscus (2003), Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), and Americanah (2013), of a short story collection, The Thing around Your Neck (2009).
She has received numerous awards and distinctions, including the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (2007) and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2008).

           

                                                                           HER BOOKS

                   Humanising History & Connecting Cultures: The role of literature 

 

  MY SUMMARY

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie spoke on Connecting Cultures at the 2012 Commonwealth Lecture, organised by the Commonwealth Foundation.  Adichie spoke about the importance of realist literature, insisting that “the role of literature is to instruct and delight”. She  explained that “Realistic fiction is not the recording of the real, as it were, it is more than that, it seeks to infuse the real with meaning. But in telling the story of what happened, meaning emerges and we are able to make connections with emotive significance. The world of realist literature is not the same as the real world, but it is able to illuminate it.
Ms Adichie reminded the Commonwealth that it is a common assumption that our collective humanity is self-evident, explaining that “when we read human stories, we become alive in bodies not our own. Literature is in many ways like faith: it is a leap of imagination. Both reading and writing require an imaginative leap and it is that imaginative leap that enables us to become alive in bodies not our own. It seems to me that we live in a world where it has become increasingly important to try and live in bodies not our own, to embrace empathy, to constantly be reminded that we share, with everybody in every part of the world, a common and equal humanity.”

A single story emphasizes how we are all different, rather than how we are similar.This is the result of being exposed to only a single story. As Nigerian writer Chimamanda Adichie points out in her TED talk, “The danger of a single story,” there is never a single story. Her own life is a testament to the fact that Africa is not just what we see on the news. 
Adichie had a happy childhood guided by loving parents, went to school, and spent her days listening to Mariah Carey.  Her life in Nigeria was a far cry from the images of starving African children that we see on TV. Through her talk highlighting personal experiences with stereotypes, both of others and that of her own, Adichie challenged me to think beyond the single story. She reminded me that as humans, we are all more similar than we are different.