Chimamanda adichie biography


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Early Life and Education

Adichie was blue blood the gentry fifth of six children. She was born on September 15, 1977, into an Igbo residence in the Nigerian city censure Enugu. She was raised gauzy the Enugu State university civic of Nsukka. Her father, James Nwoye Adichie (1932–2020), was efficient professor of statistics at prestige University of Nigeria when she was a child. Grace Ifeoma, who served as the university’s first female registrar from 1942 to 2021, was her inactivity.

Her paternal and maternal grandparents were among the members carefulness the family who practically mislaid everything during the Nigerian Nonmilitary War. Abba is the accustomed home of her family prosperous the state of Anambra.

At the University of Nigeria Secondary School in Nsukka, where Adichie complete her secondary education, she won numerous academic honours.

She debilitated a year and a bisection at the University of Nigeria studying pharmacy and medicine. She was the editor of The Compass, a publication maintained lump the university’s Catholic medical course group, during this time.

Adichie moved devour Nigeria to the United States at the age of 19 to attend Drexel University fell Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to study factious science and communications.

She disparate schools to ECSU in give orders to be close to repudiate sister Uche, who worked importance a doctor in Coventry, Usa. In 2001, she graduated matter a bachelor’s degree from ECSU.

Adichie earned her master’s in ingenious writing from Johns Hopkins University in 2003.

She graduated from Yale University with a Commander of Arts in African Studies in 2008.

Adichie has received free doctorates from 16 universities, containing Yale University, the University pressure Pennsylvania, the University of Edinburgh, Duke University, Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins University, and the Catholic University of Louvain, where she received her 16th on Apr 28, 2022.

Adichie spent the 2005–2006 academic year at Princeton Academy as a Hodder fellow.

She received a MacArthur Fellowship call a halt 2008. She received a sharing alliance from Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study for righteousness academic year 2011–2012.

Career

After reading Chinua Achebe’s 1958 novel “Things Pack up Apart” at the age work at 10, Ngozi Adichie was twig and foremost influenced by right.

Adichie was motivated by foresight her own life reflected make out the book’s pages. She besides cited Nigerian author Buchi Emecheta as an inspiration, noting these words about Emecheta’s passing: “Emecheta Buchi.” You spoke first, straight-faced we can now talk.

Beside oneself appreciate your bravery. I comprehend your artwork, Nodu na ndokwa. Adichie has also mentioned “The African Child by Camara Laye” and the 1992 anthology Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby, as key readings.

Under leadership name Amanda N.

Adichie, Adichie wrote a book of rhyme in 1997 called Decisions and a drama titled For Enjoy ofBiafra in 1998. When Adichie was a high school recognizable living in Connecticut, she wrote the short story “My Mother, theCrazy African,” which explores nobility difficulties that might develop like that which a person is confronted opposed to two cultures that are entirely opposed to one another.

Shady the one hand, traditional Nigerien society clearly delineates gender roles, whereas in America, there obey more latitude for gender declaration and fewer constraints on last people. The protagonist, Ralindu, beam her parents must overcome that obstacle because she was peer in Philadelphia while her parents were in Nigeria.

She was nominative for the Caine Prize stretch African Writing in 2002 fund her short story “You pop into America,” and the 2002 BBC World Service Short Piece Awards named her story “That Outburst Morning” a joint winner.

She was awarded the 2002–2003 King T. Wong International Short Version Prize and the PEN Core Award in 2003. Additionally, Topic Magazine and Zoetrope: All-Story both featured her stories.

Purple Hibiscus, composite debut book, was widely immortal by critics and won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Preeminent First Book in 2004.

Shakiness was also shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction bank 2004. (2005).

Half of a Regretful Sun (2006), the title order her second book, is location before and during the African Civil War and is enthusiastic by the flag of rectitude ill-fated country of Biafra. Stop Biafra by Buchi Emecheta, available in 1982, was crucial target Adichie’s research while she was writing Half of a Edgy Sun.

Half of a Rueful Sun was given the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2007. The 2014 adaptation of Fifty per cent of a Yellow Sun, confined by Biyi Bandele and primary BAFTA and Academy Award challenger Chiwetel Ejiofor and BAFTA winner Thandiwe Newton, was based checking account the novel of the exact same name.

The Thing Around Your Neck, Adichie’s third book, is top-notch collection of 12 short storied that examine the relationships halfway men and women, parents accept children, and America and Continent.

She was one of honourableness authors included in The Pristine Yorker’s “20 Under 40” Fabrication Issue in 2010. The Outperform American Short Stories from 2011 featured Adichie’s piece “Ceiling.”

The enquiry of a young Nigerian woman’s encounter with race in Land in her third book, Americanah (2013), was named one forestall “The 10 Best Books rob 2013” by The New Royalty Times.

She was selected primate one of the 39 authors under 40 in the Hay Festival and Rainbow Book Bat project Africa39, honouring Port Harcourt as the UNESCO World Album Capital, in April 2014.

Regarding campaign and writing, Adichie stated tight spot a 2014 interview: “Though Uncontrolled consider myself a storyteller, Wild wouldn’t object in the lowest if someone perceived me in that a feminist author.” I be endowed with a very feminist perspective supremacy the world, so my walk off with must somehow reflect that stance.

She co-curated the PEN Earth Voices Festival in 2015. Greatness “One Book, One New York” programme, a component of splendid community reading campaign encouraging scream city residents to read righteousness same book, selected Americanah bit the winner in March 2017.

One of the highest honours make known intellectuals in the United States, the American Academy of Bailiwick and Sciences, revealed in Apr 2017 that Adichie had antique elected as one of 228 new members to be manifest on October 7, 2017, crash into its 237th class.

Zikora is a standalone short tale newborn Adichie about sexism and train a single mother, was obtainable in 2020. Half of expert Yellow Sun was chosen wedge the general audience in Nov 2020 as the best be anxious of fiction to have won the Women’s Prize for Conte in its 25-year existence.

Notes reign Grief, Adichie’s memoir of affiliate father’s passing, was published pulse May 2021.

It is home-made on an essay with glory same name that was in print in The New Yorker in September 2020. Her comments, tempt described by the reviewer dispense The Independent, “Her words admonitory a welcome, authentic voice go-slow this most universal of interior, which is also one holdup the most universally avoided.”

Personal Life

Adichie is married to a Nigerien doctor, Ivara Esege, in 2009.

They have a daughter, who was born in 2016 cheek by jowl. Adichie splits her time philosophy writing seminars in Nigeria presentday the United States.

Controversies

Religion

Adichie is expert Catholic and was brought phone up in a Catholic home, nevertheless she feels that occasionally smear opinions, particularly those on campaign, are at odds with laid back religion.

She claimed that doctrine “is not a women’s-friendly institution” and “has been used test justify oppressions that are family unit on the premise that platoon are not equal human beings” during a Georgetown University sheet in 2017. She has urged Nigerian Muslim and Christian privileged to spread messages of middle and peace.

She has unfaltering as culturally Catholic and a while ago as an atheist while cultivation her daughter in the Comprehensive faith. However, as a visitor at a recent Humboldt Forum, she revealed that she difficult converted back to the Broad faith.

Race

Adichie was raised in Nigeria and was not used obviate being recognised by the astuteness of her skin; this solitary started to happen when she moved to the US attach importance to college.

Adichie had to arrangement with what it meant joke be a person of tone dye in America as a coalblack African living there. She esoteric to navigate and learn induce the concept of race. That is a topic she bedding in her 2013 book, Americanah.

LGBT Rights Advocacy

Adichie is an defend for LGBT rights in Continent.

In 2014, when Nigeria passed a law against homosexuality, she was one of the African writers who criticised the prohibited, calling it unconstitutional and “a strange priority for a kingdom with so many real problems.” She also argued that on account of consensual homosexual conduct between adults does not constitute a atrocity, the law is unjust now it criminalises it. Binyavanga Wainaina, a Kenyan author who was openly gay, was also trade fair friends with Adichie.

When explicit passed away on May 21 in Nairobi following a knock, Adichie wrote in her compliment that she was having count controlling her sobs.

Adichie has usual numerous transphobic accusations since 2017, originally for declaring that “my feeling is that trans cadre are trans women.” Later, Adichie corrected what she had supposed, writing: “Maybe I should conspiracy added that all women—trans unit included—are women, cis women aim women, and all women settle women.” However, the word “cis” does not naturally occur shut in my lexicon.

Most people governing likely wouldn’t understand it. By reason of my purpose wasn’t to lift one or the other, by the terms “trans” and “cis” acknowledges the distinction between brigade who transition and women who are born that way. Unrestrainable have defended the rights contempt transgender people and will wide open so in the future.

J.

Girl. Rowling’s essay, “J. K. Rowling Writes on Her Reasons yearn Speaking up on Sex shaft Gender Issues,” ignited “all glory hubbub” in 2020, and Adichie joined in, calling the abundance “absolutely logical.” Once more, Adichie was accused of transphobia; end up of these allegations came foreign the Nigerian novelist Akwaeke Emezi, a former student of Adichie’s writing workshop.

Adichie criticised revoke culture in response to influence outcry, saying: “In certain immovable, you aren’t permitted to fashion intellectually and personally.” Additionally, wet is not an option. Consent seems to me to hair so deficient in empathy.

Adichie extremely criticised cancel culture in strong essay from June 2021 entitled “It Is Obscene,” when she spoke with two unidentified writers who had taken her longhand course and had later criticised her on social media engage remarks she had made with regard to transgender people.

Their “passionate details of virtue that is achieve something accomplished in the public society of Twitter but not careful the personal space of friendship,” as she put it, was “obscene,” according to her.

Lectures

In 2009, Adichie spoke at TED beguile the topic “The Danger firm footing a Single Story.” With annul 27 million views, it has risen to the top sum the all-time most-watched TED Talks.

She gave the “Connecting Cultures” Commonwealth Lecture on March 15, 2012, in London’s Guildhall. Heritage her address “We should burst be feminists” for TEDxEuston in December 2012, Adichie also subject being a feminist. It sparked a feminist debate on dexterous global scale and was repellent into a book in 2014, which has reportedly sold 750,000 copies in the United States alone.

It gained more disgrace after American singer Beyoncé used a sample of it decline the 2013 song “Flawless.”

The Risk Of A Single Story

Adichie under the control of b dependent on the underrepresentation of many cultures in a TED talk elite “The Danger of a Solitary Story,” which was published impossible to differentiate July 2009.

She added lose concentration when she was a grassy girl, she used to distil a lot of American abstruse British books where the constellation of the characters were catch sight of Caucasian descent. She argued in every nook the speech that the underrepresentation of cultural diversity can produce harmful. Adichie noted the cap of many stories in diverse cultures and the need plan representation as she closed give someone his speech.

Because individuals are many-sided, she argues for a less knowledge of stories, claiming drift by doing so, one misinterprets people, their origins, and their histories. Since 2009, she has revisited the topic when as a matter of course to audiences, such as unexpected defeat the Hilton Humanitarian Symposium mock the Conrad N.

Hilton Core in 2019.

We Should All Replica Feminists

More than five million humanity have seen Adichie’s TEDx lecture from 2012, “We Should Blow your own horn Be Feminists,” which she gave at TedXEuston in London. She discussed her thoughts on shacking up construction and sexuality as favourably as her experiences as almighty African feminist.

According to Adichie, the issue with gender anticipation that it determines who astonishment are. And she added, “I’m enraged.” The way gender practical structured today is a earnest injustice. We ought to cast doubt on furious. In addition to proforma angry, I’m also hopeful now I have a strong concern in people’s ability to manage for the better.

Historically, interpretation has been known to fetch about constructive change. In ending interview with BBC News document December 8, 2021, Adichie was asked about the duty castigate being a feminist icon. She said she preferred to indicate her responsibility for herself however was okay with using laid back platform to advocate for barrenness.

She also discussed women’s bring forth to express rage since outdo inspires action.

Flawless Song

Beyoncé sampled accomplishments of Adichie’s TEDx lecture oblige her song “Flawless” in Dec 2013. We Should All Quip Feminists, a stand-alone book near Fourth Estate that contained scheme article based on the dissertation, was released in 2014.

“Anything that gets young people consecutive about feminism is a seize good thing,” Adichie subsequently purported in an interview with NPR. In a follow-up interview hash up the Dutch daily De Volkskrant, she clarified the statement, speech, “Another thing I despised was that I read everywhere: notify people know her, owing connection Beyoncé, or: she must assign extremely thankful.” That was disconcerting to me.

I reflected, “I am a writer, and own been for some time.” Side-splitting refuse to participate in that act that is now reportedly expected of me: ‘Thanks have knowledge of Beyoncé, my life will on no occasion be the same again.’ That’s why I didn’t speak fail to differentiate it much.

Adichie has made display clear that her brand some feminism is distinct from Beyoncé’s, especially when it comes stage their divergent views on greatness place of men in women’s lives, saying: “Although I don’t like her style, I criticize find it interesting that she has started to speak engender about political and social issues in recent years.” She liberality a woman who has cub power, is in charge lecture her own fate, and does what she wants.

That has my undivided attention. Adichie, banish, has been vociferous in resign yourself to to those who have tricky the singer’s feminist credentials, saying: “Whoever says they’re feminist psychoanalysis bloody feminist.”

Books

YearTitlePublisherISBNNotes
1997DecisionsMinerva Press (London)ISBN 9781861064226Poetry
1998For the love of BiafraSpectrum Books (Ibadan)ISBN 978978029032020Play
2003Purple Hibiscus4th Estate (London)ISBN 9780007189885Novel
2006Half of a Yellow Sun4th Estate (London)ISBN 9780007200283Novel
2009The Thing Leak out Your Neck4th Estate (London)ISBN 9780007306213Short story collection
2013AmericanahAlfred A.

Knopf (New York)

ISBN 9780307271082Novel
2014We Should All Background Feminists.4th Estate (London)ISBN 9780008115272An Layout (excerpt in New Daughters show evidence of Africa, ed. Margaret Busby, 2019).
2017Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Proposal in Fifteen Suggestions4th Estate (London)ISBN 9780008275709Essay
2019Sierra Leone, 1997.Black Ballon, come to an end imprint of CatapultISBN 9781936787791The comic story in the book Eat Joy-Stories & Comfort Food from 31 Celebrated Writers, collected by Natalie Eve Garrett
2021Notes on Grief4th Demesne (London)ISBN 9780593320808Memoir

Short Fiction

YearTitleFirst published
2013“Checking Out”“Checking out”.

The New Yorker. Vol. 89, no. 5. March 18, 2013. pp. 66–73.

2015“Apollo”“Apollo”. The In mint condition Yorker. Vol. 91, no. 8. 13 April 2015. pp. 64–69.
2016“The Arrangements: A Work of Fiction”“‘The Arrangements’: A Work of Small Fiction”.

The New York Epoch Book Review, July 3, 2016.

2020“Notes on Grief”“Notes on Grief”. Nobility New Yorker, September 10, 2020.
2020“Zikora”Amazon Original Stories

Awards and Nominations

Adichie report a well-decorated writer, and she has several awards and nominations to her name.

Some elaborate which are below.

  • 2019: Kasseler Burgerpreis “Prism of Reason” Award
  • 2018: Come to pass Pinter Prize
  • 2017: Grand Prix lessening l’Hérone Madame Figaro (nonfiction) answer Dear Ijeawele
  • 2015: Winner of rendering ‘Best of the Best’ sharing the second decade of nobility Baileys Women’s Prize for Myth (formerly the Orange Prize acknowledge Fiction) for Half of dialect trig Yellow Sun
  • 2015: Girls Write At the present time Awards Groundbreaker honoree
  • 2014: Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction (shortlist)
  • 2013: Stable Book Critics Circle Award
  • 2013: Metropolis Tribune Heartland Prize for Fiction
  • 2011: ThisDay Award: ”New Champions expend an Enduring Culture”
  • 2010: Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa Region, Best Book)
  • 2010: Dayton Literary Peace Prize (US)
  • 2009: John Llewellyn-Rhys Memorial Prize
  • 2009: Intercontinental Nonino Prize
  • 2008: British Book Awards: Author of the Year
  • 2008: General Foundation ‘genius’ grant
  • 2007: PEN ‘Beyond Margins’ Award 2007, for Bisection of a Yellow Sun
  • 2007: Anisfield-Wolf Book Award
  • 2007: British Book Credit, Richard & Judy Best Announce of the Year
  • 2007: Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Africa Region, Best Book)
  • 2007: James Tait Black Memorial Honour (for fiction)
  • 2007: Orange Broadband Adore for Fiction
  • 2006: National Book Critics’ Circle Award (USA)
  • 2005: Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best Book)
  • 2004: Hurston/Wright Legacy Award
  • 2004: John Llewelly-Rhys Memorial Prize
  • 2004: Orange Prize contribution Fiction
  • 2004: YALSA Best Book Disperse Young Adults Award
  • 2003: O Speechifier Short Story Prize
  • 2002: BBC Small Story Competition
  • 2002: Caine Prize dispense African Writing
  • 2002: Commonwealth Short Parcel Competition
  • 2002: David Wong Award

Other Recognition

  • 2010 Listed among The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40”
  • 2013 Listed in the middle of The New York Times “Ten Best Books of 2013 energy Africannah.” 
  • 2013 Listed among the BBC’s “Top Ten Books of 2013”, for Americanah
  • 2013 Foreign Policy quarterly “Top Global Thinkers of 2013”
  • 2013 Listed among the New African’s “100 Most Influential Africans 2013”
  • 2014 Listed among Africa39 project show consideration for 39 writers aged under 40
  • 2015 Listed among Time Magazine’s “The 100 Most Influential People”
  • 2015 Showtime Speaker at Wellesley College
  • 2017 Start Speaker at Williams College
  • 2018 Incredible Day Speaker for Harvard University
  • 2019 Class Day Speaker for University University
  • Adichie was one of 15 women selected to appear courteous the cover of the Sept 2019 issue of British Au courant, guest-edited by Meghan, Duchess elect Sussex.
  • Adichie was cited as solitary of the Top 100 cover influential Africans by New Human magazine in 2019.
  • Chimamanda was as well elected in March 2017 bare the American Academy of Discipline and Letters.

    This made supplementary the second Nigerian to remedy given such an honour, equate Prof. Wole Soyinka. She was listed among the 40 free members from 19 countries.

Net Worth

Her net worth is currently unknown.

Social Media Handle

Instagram: chimamanda_adichie

Twitter: @ChimamandaReal