Simeon Mpamugoh
Until recently, the field of literature was not unerringly generous, no thanks to the colonial experience that left the legacy such that literacy was mainly male and adult affair. The few among women who managed to breakthrough of this adverse circle to get education, nay, wrote books were deliberately disregarded. We had Flora Nwapa in that category. Besides, there was the towering image of first generation of writers, which, knowingly or unknowingly, pushed those after them into obscurity. We had the likes of Chinua Achebe, Chris Okigbo and Cyprian Ekwensi.
Fortunately, however, a lot has since changed in the world to significantly revolutionise orthodox perspectives through the progress made by the feminist movement and Africanist scholarship. Feminist movement pays attention to the works of the females in our literary landscape, while Africanist scholarship enables us to take another look at the tradition so as to understand the sexist prejudices from Europe, which is, in fact, outside our own native cultures.
The author of Life and Literature, a bio on Akachi Ezeigbo, Ezechi Onyerionwu declares that the consequence of this is that a good number of authors have been able to wean themselves of the inherited colonial mentality, and to see as our forefathers that the complete world is the one that accommodates diversity and contradictions, and places the female side by side with their male counterpart.
Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe and Ben Okri led the way, but a new wave of women writers have taken over. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has been one of those to benefit from this widened, and gender-wise outlook.
Ironically, as a foreign writer, she is one of the immediate beneficiaries of the new vista on female writers who produces her works with the western publishers. The sudden spectacular upsurge of her works and prodigious talent has abruptly taken the world by storm, in addition to the financial and media power of the western publishers and promoters. This talent has eclipsed those before her in the same way Chinua Achebe had done to the generation before him.
In a grand style, she has deconstructed the patriarchal hegemony of the pioneer male writers and brought female perspectives to her writings, which was a missing link to many African male writers. To her contemporaries, it was a courageous and inspired undertaking.
The writer burst forth into the literary scene with the publication of her debut novel, Purple Hibiscus (2004). The effort was crowned with a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book in 2005. This was followed by another award-winning title, Half of a Yellow Sun, in 2007, which portrays civil war proceedings. Its release was followed by a Macarthur fellowship in 2008.
Her latest work, Americanah, describes a young couples reintegrating back into Nigerian life after an American education. The book won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, while Half of a Yellow Sun earned the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction and the Anisfield Wolf Book Award. It was also adapted into a film by Biyi Bandele in 2014, which was screened in a special presentation at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival, featuring Thandie Newton, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Onyeka Onwenu and Anika Oni Rose. Many of her characters come from her Igbo ethnicity.
Besides, by the time she showed up on the Orange Prize shortlist with Purple Hibiscus, Nigerian fiction was in full stride. In 2007, when she won the prize, Vanity Fair’s Africa Issue described her as parting the literary waves like Cleopatra; and parted the waves she actually did as witnessed by her latest exploits on the field of literature. Following closely behind were many of her compatriots: Seffi Atta, Chika Unigwe, now taking the literary world by storm –with publishing deals and awards in tow.
Decades after independence, their concerns are different from those of the first generation, grappling instead with shifting notions of freedom and the individual in a globalise world. These feminists are exploring themes including gender, sexuality and feminism. Many are based in the west and are, thus, making significant contributions to the growing canon of immigrant stories. “Adichie is now firmly established as a literary superstar and cultural icon,” The Irish Times observes.
Her Ted Talk, “We should All Be Feminists” was sampled by Beyonce and also distributed to 16-year olds in Sweden, which has led to her publication in over 30 languages.
Today, Adichie has written several novels, short stories, poems, and plays. These books are neither sophomoric nor hackneyed as they interrogate burning and contemporary issues of human existence. The author who sees herself more as a storyteller feels that she cannot be covered with a hood as a feminist. Hence, she is very feminist in the way she looks at the world, which somehow has also become part of her drudgery.
She is vocal and sagacious, which explains why she is sought after by international media and world bodies to headline speaking engagements on current political and social issues. Her writings and comments on Nigeria are used to set agenda on social discourse. Also an advocate, she has challenged at a particular point in time, the passing of antigay law in Nigeria portraying it as a failure of democratic rule.
She notes that the mark of a true democracy was not in the rule of its majority but in the protection of its minority; otherwise, mob impartiality would be considered democratic. As one of the authors whose narratives are helping to propel the phenomenon that is Nigerian fiction on the global stage, the author, who visited Rochester Institution of Technology on April 4, 2011, as part of the Caroline Werner Gannett project’s “Visionaries in Motion 1V,” speaker series, Mary Lynn Broe, Caroline Werner Professor and chair of the project observes that Adichie’s writing displays what she calls a “complicated affection” that is willing to criticise American culture, its form of condescension and the way systems of power operates.
In a interview she granted an online publication, she was said to have been a cornerstone of both Nigerian and American literature in recent times. She also spoke on her favourite Lagosian haunts, leading a “happily boring” life and the short stories that come out of traffic jams. Her words, “I always feel that one can find anything at all in Lagos, you need only to know where to look. Lagos has an unplanned-ness to it, houses spring up everywhere like weeds, roads and streets interweave.
“It is not a pretty city, in the conventional western understanding of a pretty city, and it does not want to aspire to be. Traffic is a recurring motif: on weekdays the roads are full of cars, and Lagosians make their plans around traffic. It is a city full of dreams and distrust; Lagosians have big dreams and big ambitions and the first instinct of a Lagosians is to distrust the next person and the next person’s motivation. And yet it is a city full of kindness and warmth.
“I have seen people help elderly strangers, carrying heavy bags, give stranded strangers a lift, go out of their way to give directions to a lost driver. The air in Lagos is one of striving, of hustling and it is a city that very easily leaves you behind,” she said.
Since bursting into the literary landscape more than a decade ago, it has been no holds barred for this Nigeria’s talented writer, as she has attracted for herself several laurels and honours, which is an eloquent testimony of hard work and creativity. She has been applauded as a prominent young anglophone author who has succeeded in attracting a new generation of readers to African literature.
Her name features prominently when it comes to discussions on fiction, poetry and short stories, especially when she released Decisions, a collection of poems published in 1997 and her first play, For Love of Biafra, in 1998. The general acceptance of her literary contributions has been very amazing, thus, accumulating a large number of fans from within and outside the country.
The Enugu-born writer, who hails from Abba in Anambra State, started her academic journey in Nsukka where she attended primary and secondary schools. She had a stint in the study of medicine and pharmacy at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, before she left Nigeria for the United States of America at the age of 19 where she completed her education.
The mother of two, who shuttles between Nigeria, where she mentors young writers in creative workshops and the United States, where her family lives, was equally shortlisted for the 2002 Caine Prize for her short story, “You in America.” Also her story, “That Harmattan Morning,” published in 2003, was selected as joint winner of the BBC short story awards. She also won the O. Henry Prize for the American Embassy.
Chimamanda Adichie’s third book, The Thing around Your Neck (2009), is a collection of short stories. In 2010, it was listed among the authors of The New Yorker’s “20 under 40” fiction. Her story “Ceiling” was also included in the 2011 edition of the best American short stories. In 2013, she published her third and latest novel, Americanah. The book increased her fame as it was selected by the New York Times as one of the 10 Best Books of 2013, besides winning the 2013 Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for fiction established in 1988 by the Chicago Tribune Newspaper.
The Heartland Prize is for both fiction and non-fiction categories. It mirrors books that express apprehension about American issues, causes and anxieties. One of the officials described Americanah as “a powerful, resonant novel that should be celebrated and shared with a wider audience.”
It is to give vent to Adichie’s works accepted globally that America’s singer, Beyonce, surprised her fans when she dropped a new album on iTunes in December 2013, featuring Chimamanda on a track titled “Flawless”. As an Igbo, she has through her creative writings, conduct and appearance promoted African culture by her hairdo and dress sense.
In a chat with Kate Kellaway of The Observer she said, “African women should be proud of their natural hair, which is the pride of Africans instead of feeling inferior wearing it.” The writer who spoke on African culture as it relates to women also revealed. “I am a bit of a fundamentalist when it comes to African culture and dressing. Hair is hair, whether white or black,” she fumed.
She complimented late literary icons, Prof. Chinua Achebe and Flora Nwapa, saying that her rise to fame was not complete without the impact their works made on her. “These erudite scholars are very important personalities to me. Achebe’s writings gave me the confidence to go into writing. He said this of me after reading the manuscript of my second novel:
We do not usually associate wisdom with beginners, but here is a new writer endowed with the gift of ancient storytellers. Adichie knows what is at stake, and what to do about it. She is fearless or she would not have taken on the intimidating horror of Nigeria’s civil war.
This is a testament to Adichie as a talented craft woman from the outset of a writing career, which has seen her redefining African literature.