Adichie: Commonwealth Lecture 2012

Fidelity Bank gets catty with Adichie

Here's Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie caught in Ooops-like mode at the Farafina literary evening at the Civic Centre in Lagos on May 29.

Adichie, who's made the New Yorker's list of 20 writers under 40 (no surprise) could have responded with 'No, they didnt!' if shown Fidelity Bank's recent press release announcing their 2010 workshop, taking place in an unspecified serene location in Abuja, commencing July 18. The Fidelity Workshop is to be led by Helon Habila who the bank says is "a more rounded" choice for them.

The question then follows: 'a more rounded choice' than who, exactly? Adichie? Is this an 'Ouch' moment?

Once upon a time, Adichie started a workshop to bring new Nigerian writers to the fore, and got Fidelity Bank to sponsor it. She starred in many a full page advert for the bank. Now she's moved the workshop to the Farafina Trust, with sponsorship by Nigerian Breweries, and it seems Fidelity Bank is sour. So, they rebrand her workshop as theirs and sign Habila on board.

One more writing workshop in Nigeria is to be welcomed, especially with the involvement of Habila, who has not been seen to be a major champion of up-coming Nigerian writers. But did Fidelity really have to get so personal in their press release?

• Images by MW

Yesterday's BookJam

Chuma Nwokolo (standing) reads from his poetry collections, Memories of Stone, at yesterday's BookJam - the fourth edition also featuring (from left) Binyavanga Wainaina, Sade Adeniran and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Nwokolo followed his reading of a poem on old shirts with an excerpt from his book, 'Diaries of a Dead African'. The hilarious passage brought the house down and probably led to quite a few sales of the book for the author to autograph afterwards.

Wainaina was the first reader, followed by Sade Adeniran (who read a funny 'wormy' episode from Imagine This, after which the main character, Lola Ogunwole misguidedly plots her expulsion from a hated school by opening her legs).

Adichie read work the of two participants in the ongoing Farafina Writing workshop, the pieces actually produced during the sessions. The workshop writers were all at the event - and yes, Novuyo Rosa Tshuma did make it after all.

The BookJam packed them in, into the Lifestyle Bookstore of the Silverbird Galleria on Victoria Island. This being an event involving Adichie, BookJam 4 also had its share of the now familiar 'Chimamanda groupies' who can't ask a question or comment without beginning with 'Oh, I love you sooo much. You are so wonderful. I can't believe you're here in front of us etcetera etcetera'. The spontaneous burst of declared affection is now usually drowned out by the ohhhs and ahhhs of a knowing crowd - as yesterday's main contender discovered, while someone said 'pass the tissue!'

Usually held on the last Saturday of the month, BookJam was moved forward this month because the Farafina literary event of readings and music which traditionally closes Adichie's workshop, holds next Saturday (at the Civic Centre, Lagos).

Sade Adeniran continues her book tour at the House of Makeda today.

• Images by MW - see Igoni Barrett's photos here

Adichie's Abuja Reading

Words and images by Tunji Ajibade

The Abuja Writers’ Forum (AWF) in collaboration with the US Embassy hosted Nigeria’s award winning author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, in Abuja on May 15, 2010.

The attendance was something unprecedented. Nigerians and members of the diplomatic community had begun to arrive the venue long before the time for commencement. That says something. People like writers; Nigerians love their own. They came in droves, some to meet her for the first time, others to identify with her, and yet many more to hear her voice of hope, of her vision for the nation’s literature.

And it was good, the organisers foresaw it. The large capacity Cyprian Ekwensi Centre for Art and Culture was the venue. The 4pm time for the reading was slow in coming, as many had arrived about one hour earlier. Then she walked into the hall of the event, smiling in her usual calm way. Heads had turned, and necks craned as seated guests tried to get a glimpse of her. In a simple red dress, but surprisingly, without the trademark scarf on her head, she certainly had an image that no kid on the street of Abuja would miss. That, considering the good work the (Nigeria) Re-branding Team has done, having displayed her picture for months on green cabs plying roads in the nation’s capital city. Not to mention her images flashed regularly on TV, also by the same Team, where she is listed among Nigerians who are the nations’ positive faces on the international stage. An attendee at the reading spelt this out for the diplomatic community in attendance: “People like Chimamanda should be considered as the image of the country,” instead of the negative treatment Nigerian get abroad.

The Master of Ceremony, Mohammed Sani, set things rolling. He called for opening remarks from different personalities, and introduction was made of literary bodies such as the Open Mic Forum whose members were present at the event. Then the guest author sat down to business. Adichie read not from her latest book, The Thing Around Your Neck, a collection of stories; rather she read an excerpt from a new, unpublished work.
Those who listened would later point out variously: “There was this shocking effect from her description of some things at various points in the story”; “Her story had this graphic touch to it”. This is not surprising. The author is of the school of ‘show’ don’t ‘tell’. She had told her students about this at the creative writing workshop which she handled earlier in the day.

The 25 participants at the workshop had been selected from the responses to a call for submissions. “The entries created much problem, and it was difficult making the selection because of the quality of what was submitted,” Dr Emman Usman Shehu, president of Abuja Writers Forum (AWF) had said at the event. “I write what I like to read”; Watch out for clichés, both of language and of ideas - they are convenient but a lazy way of writing,” Adichie had told her students while she took them through the whole circle of how to generate ideas on what to write, putting them on paper, vetting the work, and how to get a publisher. “I enjoyed the workshop”, she said later, but wondered if a one-day workshop was enough to do all that was necessary to equip a writer. Her yearly workshop in Lagos under her foundation, Farafina Trust, lasts 10 days. She made the best of the brief encounter she had with participants at the Abuja writing workshop though, having pointed out earlier on: “Maybe I can use this to see how well a one-day workshop works out.”

The question and answer time at the reading was a drama on its own – and it usually is, wherever this author who holds MA from Yale University is on the ‘hot seat.’ “I read your book Purple Hibiscus, and you appeared to me like you are fighting a battle,” actor, theatre director and consultant, Jide Zubeiru Attah, said when he had the opportunity to take the first shot. “But in Half of Yellow Sun,” he continued, “you appeared subdued.” Adichie denied much of this. “I am not fighting a battle, what I write is the way I feel,” she said with reference to Attah’s perception that she had taken up the cause of women as against the main (male) character in Purple Hibiscus. And she had no apology for the way she felt about the things she wrote, as her usual candour came to the fore: “If people find my book offensive, they should put it aside and read something else.”


“What propelled you to this level in such a short time?” was the question Dr Onuh, a director in the capital city administration, asked. The response from the author was as informative as it was educative. She identified the fact of growing up on a university campus as important. She commended Nsukka campus, the environment, for the major impetus it gave her to take interest in scholarly pursuits. There, everything was around books, reading and all that was academic. There was the fact of having parents who worked in the same setting too. She has a professor of statistics and former Deputy Vice Chancellor of the University for a father, as well as the first female registrar of the same University as mother. “I have the most amazing, lovely parents,” Adichie said. Her parents gave room for questions. “We ask questions, seeking to answers to them.” And of course, “I made my choice.” The choice to write rather than continue the one and half year of studying medicine and pharmacy that she had put in at the University of Nsukka, before she went to live with a relative in the United States of America. She went on to study Communication at Drexel University, at which time she had begun to pen Purple Hibiscus which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book in 2005. When the question as to the importance of vision for her where writing was concerned was raised, she said, “the vision for writing is important, and, yes, I am somewhat obsessive about it,” recounting in some detail how she didn’t want to let go of the manuscript of Half of A Yellow Sun, as she had kept calling it back for “one more revision.”

As the Question and Answer session continued, issues of publishing and marketing of books got the author drawing out her daggers. To the complaints that being outside Nigeria may be an advantage in getting a publisher, she said, “I know a woman who is published recently in the US, she wrote the book in Nigeria .” That rhymes with the position she usually took, “If you have done your work well, it will find a home (publisher).” She went on to state that there was something for everyone to do in the effort to overcome the challenges that confront writers. It was clear from her argument that she is one author who does not believe that writers should sit in a corner and complain about how the government or organisations that sponsor literature did not do it well. She believes every writer must sit up and do something to correct whatever is wrong in the system. “What are we doing ourselves? These are important questions we need to attend to,” she had said at the Abuja reading.

And she had set out her own target. “I will like to go to primary schools all over the country.” That, as part of her effort to continue to promote literature by improving quality of writing as well as get people to read, even the younger ones. Tall dream, it may seem. But someone once remarked that a ‘vision is not big enough, until it shocks those that hear it.” Adichie’s is not only daring, it dares, sending out messages that she wants writers to sit up and take back the system from anyone who may be sending it in the wrong direction. From her explanations about going to primary schools, it was obvious she envisioned younger generations raised as consumers of literature materials and who will be potential market for literature when they grow up

Editors of big publishing houses have not been left out of her vision for literature. Earlier this year, she organised a workshop for editors in an effort to improve the quality of reading materials that children in the nation are exposed to. “A newspaper may be all that a young child in a remote place is exposed to,” she argued, “and he may think that all the wrong styles of writing he finds in a newspaper is the best.” She was concerned that this, not only newspaper but any badly edited work, has actually influenced a whole generation. And there is the generation of Nigerians who don’t read beyond what they need to pass examinations. “We must begin to brainwash Nigerians,” Adichie announced. Her audience had made noises, indicating they didn’t get what she actually meant. Not many quickly got wise to her idea of setting in motion a revolution that will change the whole face of literature in the country. So she added, “in a good way,” to clarify her comment, which meant reorienting Nigerians with regard to reading and writing. Yet she had more to say in order to arrive home with her listeners. “If my dream of brainwashing comes true, we will change things.” That was a challenge, and more than that, a voice of encouragement, hope, a dream. “We can do it in spite of our setbacks,” she had added, before she left the ‘hot seat.’

Adichie reviews 'Blood and Oil'

For once we don't have to rely on foreign reviews of Blood and Oil, BBC 2's two-part film about militancy in the Niger Delta.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie reviews the film in the Arts & Culture section of today's NEXT on Sunday.

Excerpt
Blood and Oil' is a film that names names - MEND, Joint Task Force - and a film that is clear about its contemporary Port Harcourt setting. There are scenes whose sole aim is to provide location authenticity, such as the Nigerian official slipping bribe money into his socks, the rowdy Nigerians in the economy cabin of an international flight, the excessive cell phone yakking, and these are all convincing. So, why are the accents so wrong? ("Where are these people from?" A Nigerian friend I watched the film with in Lagos asked). Sam Dede plays the Nigerian bad guy with dignified grace, and he is a relief to listen to because he alone sounds credibly Nigerian. It is lazy at best and patronising at worst to use characters who mostly speak a kind of generic Africanised-English; they become caricatures. Details matter because they lend authenticity and, for a knowledgeable viewer, can make the entire film believable or not.

• Read the full review.

Farafina Trust Creative Writing Workshop

Press Release

Farafina Trust will be holding a creative writing workshop in Lagos, organized by award-winning writer and creative director of Farafina Trust, Chimamanda Adichie, from May 20 to May 29 2010. The workshop is sponsored by Nigerian Breweries Plc. Guest writers who will co-teach the workshop alongside Adichie are the Caine Prize Winning Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina, Chika Unigwe winner of a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship for creative writing, South African writer Niq Mhlongo and celebrated Ghanaian writer Ama Ata Aidoo.

The workshop will take the form of a class. Participants will be assigned a wide range of reading exercises, as well as daily writing exercises. The aim of the workshop is to improve the craft of Nigerian writers and to encourage published and unpublished writers by bringing different perspectives to the art of storytelling. Participation is limited only to those who apply and are accepted.

To apply, send an e-mail to Udonandu2010@gmail.com

Your e-mail subject should read ‘Workshop Application.’

The body of the e-mail should contain the following:

1. Your Name
2. Your address
3. A few sentences about yourself
4. A writing sample of between 200 and 800 words. The sample must be either fiction or non-fiction.

All material must be pasted or written in the body of the e-mail. Please Do NOT include any attachments in your e-mail. Applications with attachments will be automatically disqualified. Deadline for submissions is April 22 2010. Only those accepted to the workshop will be notified by May 6 2010. Accommodation in Lagos will be provided for all accepted applicants who are able to attend for the ten-day duration of the workshop. A literary evening of readings, open to the public, will be held at the end of the workshop.


Okey Adichie
Programme Officer
Farafina Trust

New Reads

Emmanuel Sigauke has a story in the SNReview. Mopane Whips looks at the side-effects of war on the damaged psyche of young men in the community. One such man, Mukoma, has a rather disturbing fondness for beating and chasing his younger 'brother' all over town.
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Excerpt
Instead of fetching a Mopane whip, I went to a Mubondo tree. I thought Mubondo whips were more painful—they looked so—than the Mopane. But boy was I wrong when I returned to Mukoma with the fairly long and fat whip, which I knew was ready to greet my bottom. Mukoma didn’t have to say anything in response. One look on his face told me to go back to the usual Mopane. Mopane whips were just killers, so painful you often wondered whether they had just been created to be weapons of pain. And indeed, Chari, whose father, another man who had not joined the war but told everyone he was a comrade, beat him often as well, had confirmed that Mopane was just for the purpose of straightening bad boys like me. He told me he was not bad; his father whipped him to put Mopane trees to use. But I did not agree with him. We also used Mopani for other things, especially firewood. I liked Mopane wood fire, but hated the burn of the whip on my bottom.

I returned, whip in hand, approaching Mukoma slowly. He was waiting, smoking some tobacco wrapped in a piece of newspaper. The cigarette packs he had brought from South Africa were gone by now, and he had taken to smoking this tobacco that made him twist his body with each pull, then bulged his lips excessively. I walked, slower, but determined to hand him the whip; soon this—the beating itself—would be over, and I would put salted water on my wound and then go to collect the goats and enclose them in their pen. But something in me told me not to keep walking, so I stopped.

• Read Mopane Whips

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Things Fall Apart Reloaded
In the year of the fiftieth anniversary of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has a new short story, The Headstrong Historian, which reimagines the arrival of white colonialists' in Igbo society from a woman-centred perspective.
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Excerpt
The day the white men visited her clan, Nwamgba left the pot she was about to put in her oven, took Anikwenwa and her girl apprentices, and hurried to the square. She was at first disappointed by the ordinariness of the two white men; they were harmless-looking, the color of albinos, with frail and slender limbs. Their companions were normal men, but there was something foreign about them, too: only one spoke Igbo, and with a strange accent. He said that he was from Elele, the other normal men were from Sierra Leone, and the white men from France, far across the sea. They were all of the Holy Ghost Congregation, had arrived in Onicha in 1885, and were building their school and church there. Nwamgba was the first to ask a question: Had they brought their guns, by any chance, the ones used to destroy the people of Agueke, and could she see one? The man said unhappily that it was the soldiers of the British government and the merchants of the Royal Niger Company who destroyed villages; they, instead, brought good news. He spoke about their god, who had come to the world to die, and who had a son but no wife, and who was three but also one. Many of the people around Nwamgba laughed loudly. Some walked away, because they had imagined that the white man was full of wisdom. Others stayed and offered cool bowls of water.

Weeks later, Ayaju brought another story: the white men had set up a courthouse in Onicha where they judged disputes. They had indeed come to stay. For the first time, Nwamgba doubted her friend. Surely the people of Onicha had their own courts. The clan next to Nwamgba’s, for example, held its courts only during the new yam festival, so that people’s rancor grew while they awaited justice. A stupid system, Nwamgba thought, but surely everyone had one. Ayaju laughed and told Nwamgba again that people ruled others when they had better guns. Her son was already learning about these foreign ways, and perhaps Anikwenwa should, too. Nwamgba refused. It was unthinkable that her only son, her single eye, should be given to the white men, never mind the superiority of their guns.

• Read The Headstrong Historian

Farafina on America

View the YouTube webvert for Farafina Volume 13, guest-edited by Adichie. I'm still reading through the edition, comprised mainly of essays by over 30 contributors on theme of [Africans looking at] America. My own thoughts may come later...

Meanwhile, here's an excerpt from Sunday May 11th edition of Toyin Akinosho's Artsville column (in The Guardian, Lagos)...
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Farafina Hits The Mother Lode
The current issue of Farafina, the literary magazine,is enjoying a round of earnest conversation among the Lagos arthouse crowd. Everybody, it seems, has something to say about the edition, which is guest-edited by the novelist Chimamanda Adichie. Still, one of the more interesting takes on the publication comes from a cyberspace input by the architect Ayo Arigbabu, who contributes a “design sleuth” column in Guardian Life, the pull out in this newspaper. Arigbabu starts by recalling Adichie’s main motive for choosing America as theme for the edition.“She insists she wanted 'to create a messy montage ofsorts, inspired by those Nigerian Sunday Newspapers in which the answers of ordinary people to a question, often a ridiculous question are printed on a two page spread". But then, according to him “there were just too many essays, which got repetitive (and thus tiresome considering the theme: 'America' - of course everybody would write about the land of plenty that still manages to dash the tallest dreams) after a while”. In spite of that, Arigbabu says that the magazine “does come together though”. He then does some sort of review:, “Teju Cole's reparte with a cab driver in New York is my favourite. Karen King's piece falls flat but there are enough other interesting bits and pieces to make up for it...Like Ogaga Ifowodo's Shock Jock country. Biodun Jeyifo goes on and on...a whole essay to say America is the best place for African academics? I would have been more interested to read little anecdotes about him toasting some hispanic chic in between lectures... I mean, do you really go to America and spend all your time blowing grammar? The design is simplistic, (though I'm still attracted to the title design for Ndidi Nwuneli's 'A Common burden'...cool!) but works for readers who just want to get on with it and can't handle complex visual gymnastics, the content is robust with 29 contributors, Gado's cartoons were witty and mature and the magazine seems like it could have done with a few more interludes like his to break the monotony of all those 'centre spread essays'. Perhaps Miss Adichie should have asked the contributors to tell unusual stories about their experiences in / about America, if she had, instead of asking for 'essays', it might have turned out more of a lurid expose and less of a predictable scrap book...but then, that's exactly what she wanted...a'int it?” The magazine is on sale at Nu Metro Stores in Lagos.

• Farafina 13's cover is actually blue, but by some magic it came out orange on this blog. Go figure!

New Read 1

I last bought Harper's Bazaar (or was it Harpers & Queen?) when Salman Rushdie wed Padma Lakshmi in New York and the pictures (featuring writer-wedding goers including Zadie Smith & Kathy Lette) were splashed on the pages of the magazine. Golden couple now blissfully divorced... I bought the magazine again this month, the June issue, after I read on Petina Gappah's blog about a story in there contributed by Orange Prize winner -
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(talking of the Orange, how the prize went totally drain-ward this year, with the wholly misguided choice of that embarrassment of a celebrity who's always falling drunk out of clubs, changing clothes on the streets and being pictured with strange stuff seemingly up her nose - as a judge! I'm talking of Lily Allen, who people actually thought was cool. Once. The choice of Allen as judge raised not a few eyebrows - including Maggie Gee's - and apologists used up all their choice words defending the selection. Lily Allen left the Orange with peels only, when she 'dropped out' of the judging panel. Soon after, we learned she'd actually been dropped by the organisation after failing to turn up at judges' panel meetings. She helped 'select' the longlist, apparently - by phone. She more than proved the point some made all along, that she had no place on a literary award judging panel. Ms Allen has gone even more erratic since, only a few shades better than Amy Winehouse. Pity. It shouldn't happen to an Orange Prize judge. Or, it shouldn't have happened to the Orange Prize).
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- anyhow, about what we were speaking... I read on Petina Gappah's blog that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has a new short story in the current issue of Harper's Bazaar, so I went and got me a copy. Amarachi is the story, about a young Nigerian woman who comes back home from America for her wedding, all changed (to her mother Mrs Njoku's consternation), and with a Kenyan fiance in tow.

Since 'Amarachi' is all of one page, I don't suppose Harper's will thank me for reproducing the page visually here, but here's an excerpt we typed up earlier:
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"They were on their second cups when Sochienne said she wanted to have her wedding at Amarachi, the village house where she had spent her childhood holidays; she preferred a venue of emotional significance to an overpriced gilded hall. Mrs Njoku choked on her tea. The hall was already paid for but, more important, Amarachi was old, the grounds sloped, this was the rainy season and the mud would ruin women's shoes and nobody would take a wedding seriously if it was held in that backwater. Indeed, nobody would come."
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Not quite what Mrs Njoku planned for her daughter's wedding. The short-short story is illustrated with images posed by the author herself. It seems she channelled the mother in one image, and the daughter in another. Wordsbody's preferred image is reproduced here. Those wanting to read what happens with the wedding at Amarachi, are to seek out Harper's Bazaar.

Chimamanda in London

Catch Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Orange Prize winning author of Purple Hibiscus & Half of a Yellow Sun in London tomorrow 7th April. Details on the flyer (left)

Adichie on Ekwensi

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In the Review section of today's Guardian, Orange Prize winner Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie remembers Cyprian Ekwensi, who died recently.

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Excerpt

In the testosterone-fuelled political and cultural scene of 1960s Nigeria, Ekwensi wrote novels that looked at the world through female eyes. The women did a lot of hip-swinging (and in People of the City, one is described as "a real danger to men's moral loyalties") but they were often wonderfully bold. The Igbo character Lilia in Iska, for example, confronts her Hausa husband's Igbo killer much to everyone's surprise: "Why do you young men go about spreading hate, allowing politicians to use you? They are in their mansions . . . you are sleeping in your own excrement."

In my favourite of his novels, the eponymous Jagua Nana (nicknamed for the English luxury car) is an ageing sex worker whose exaggerated sexuality is of the brassy, chain-smoking, body- baring sort; she helps her ambitious boyfriend get his education in England, she houses a homeless girl at the club, gives away most of the money she finds, makes peace between two feuding families. She is also full of contradictions and always interesting, by turns confident and self-questioning, gentle, resentful, hateful, clever and humane. The liberal use of her sexual charms to get what she wants verges on caricature - in Ekwensi's novels, women endlessly place the hands of men on their breasts to great success - as we follow her picaresque journey. Ekwensi's engagement with sexuality is refreshing, though, because it lacks the pursed-lip restraint of much of the Nigerian fiction of his time and, even more remarkable, has female characters acting as sexual initiators. Men are often helpless in the face of this, bringing about much unintended humour, such as when Jagua's lover seriously muses about liking being "molested by her" and another lover is described as "mumbling incoherently and sucking at her lips like a child of six months".

New Reads

Extract from A. Igoni Barrett's novel in progress

Daoju Abrakasa--who until she came to depend on it for the courage to face up to each day’s challenges had steered clear of even the whiff of alcohol--had taken to the bottle not long after she and her three children were forced to abandon the comfort of her husband’s house. Prior to her removal she had for five long months been engaged in a tooth-and-nail battle to secure what was hers by right of marriage. Pa Abrakasa, eighty-two years old but still hale and hearty enough to drain five calabashes of palm wine at a sitting and then make the bedsprings squeal every night as he played house with his fourth and youngest wife, had one day thrown a quizzical glance at his chest, scratched his grizzled chin, and died. His death struck his household like a thunderclap: no one had seen it coming.

• Read the extract, Eyes of a Barren Witch...

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And courtesy of 'The Binj', a new story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, My American Jon, exclusively on Binyavanga Wainaina's blog. A narrative of 'race, writing and difference'. Oh, plus sex and romantic love. Amaka has been with white Jon for 2 years. Are they headed for the altar, or will 'complexity' get in the way? Put another way, will Amaka do something to shake that 'certainty' with which Jon regards everything and everyone? Here's an excerpt...

Who says we were not lying all those times we clung to the comforting idea of complexity? It wasn’t about race, we would say, it was complex – Jon speaking first and me promptly agreeing. What if the reasons for most things didn’t require blurred lines? What about the day we walked into a Maine restaurant with white-linen-covered tables, and the waiter looked at us and asked Jon, “table for one?” Or when the new Indian girlfriend of Jon’s golf partner Ashish said she had enjoyed her graduate experience at Yale but had disliked how close the ghetto was and then her hand flew to her mouth after ‘ghetto’ and she turned to me and said, “oh, I’m so sorry” and Jon nodded as if to accept the apology on my behalf. What about when he, Jon, said he hated the predatory way a black man had looked at me in Central Park, and I realized I had never heard him use the word predatory before? Or the long weekend in Montreal when the strawberry-haired owner of the bed and breakfast refused to acknowledge me and spoke and smiled at Jon and I was not sure whether she disliked black people or simply liked Jon and later in the room, for the first time I did not agree that it was complex, at least not in the way I had agreed all the other times. I shouted at Jon – the worst thing is never being sure when it is race and not race and you’ll never have this baggage!

• Doesn't bode well, does it? Read My American Jon...

Chimamanda in Ile-Ife

When the Orange Lady Came to Ife

Words & Images by Adedotun Eyinade

Not even the organizers expected the massive turnout that the event witnessed; perhaps that was what informed the recourse to the thespian venue. Examinations, though winding to a close, were still very much in the air and students were already exiting the campus for the weekend. In spite of these odds, students, lecturers and art enthusiasts in general, trooped out in their hundreds to watch Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the Orange-prize winning author read from her acclaimed works.

Pit Theatre, venue of the book reading, was on Friday August 3, 2007 filled with an enthusiastic audience who had started trickling into the venue hours before the arrival of the author. The author, clad in a snazzy light-green top on a black skirt, sauntered into the venue at about 4.00pm in company with Binyavanga Wainana, the Kenyan founding editor of Kwani?, the literary magazine that has produced other Caine-prize winning authors like him.

The duo who had recently facilitated a creative writing workshop in Lagos were the guests of the Faculty of Arts, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.


In his opening remarks, Dr Chima Anyadike, lecturer in the Department of English said the hosting of the author was in sync with the tradition of the Faculty in creating a platform for celebrated authors to showcase their works. He reeled out a list of revered literary figures- Amos Tutola, Nadine Gordimer- who had been hosted in the past. He expressed delight that the audience trooped out in throngs to grace the event.At exactly 4.40pm, Chimamanda Adichie mounted the soapbox to read from her two books. She commenced with Purple Hibiscus, a novel that launched her into literary reckoning, regaling her listeners with the haunting tale of Jaja and Kambili. The audience, many of whom were attending a reading for the first time, equally followed with keen attention, the reading of the rave-making Half of a Yellow Sun. With a voice that throbbed with passion and vim, she read snatches of the house-boy story, connecting with a responsive audience that did not allow the riveting details of Ugwu, and other larger than life characters of the book elude them.

The sublimity of her work was brought closer to her audience whom could not help but be immersed in her reading. Binyavanga Wainaina, who wrote the seminal satire, How to Write About Africa, was invited to read excerpts from his forthcoming novel, Discovering Home. Binyavanga, whom Adichie described as “a writer for whom I have deep respect” took the audience through memorable moments of growing up in post-independence Kenya. Discovering Home, a mini-biography, is a novelistic adaptation of the short- story that won him the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2002. The magazine Kwani? which he established after winning the prize has also produced another winner, Kenyan Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, who won in 2003.

Binyavanga, who was in the news recently for rejecting the World Economic Forum’s “Youth Global Leader” award commented on the aesthetic beauty of the University. “I am happy to be in Nigeria. Everything here is beautiful.”

Everything was not all books and literature, the event was interspersed with a dance performance by the dance troupe of the Department of Dramatic Arts. In an entrancing performance, the graceful dancers thrilled both the guest writers and the audience. Binyavanya appeared particularly enthralled by the dexterity with which the drummers beat the drums.

The enthusiasm with which the audience embraced the writers’ works was reflected in the myriad of question directed at them during the question and answer session. Binyavanga was asked why he rejected the WEF award. To this he replied that “I didn’t know what the initiative was about .The letter announcing my nomination was extremely vague.” He further added that he got to hear about the nomination in the press before he got the letter. In reacting to why he made his rejection a public issue, he reasoned that he didn’t send the letter to the public “but to my mailing list.”

Chimamanda Adichie on her part didn’t shy away from the issue that has been raised as regards her obsession with the colours. ”It is not a deliberate thing.” She credited her editor with coming up with the title “Purple Hibiscus” while Half of a Yellow Sun stemmed from the Biafran flag. “I don’t know if I will set my future books in Nsukka. My work is informed by my background. Nsukka will always influence my writing,” she added, when she was asked about her fixation with the university town of Nsukka.At about 6.33pm, the Faculty of Arts added a fresh award to the growing list of her laurels. The award was presented by Professor Remi Sonaiya of the Department of Foreign Languages. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, beaming with her trademark smile, thanked the Faculty for the warm reception accorded her.

Members of the intelligentsia who graced the occasion include Professor Y. K.Yusuf, Head of Department, Department of English, Prof. Adebayo Lamikanra, convener of the Ife Festival of Poetry, Dr Lere Oladitan, author of Bolekaja and other stories, Dr Funke Ogunleye, head of department, Department of Dramatic Arts.By the time the programme wound to a close, literary enthusiasts filed into a queue to have their copies autographed by the author. It was indeed a yellow day for Ife’s literati.

• Words & Images © Adedotun Eyinade
  
  

New Reads

A new short story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, On Monday Last Week, is in the new issue of Granta. Kamara has come to join her husband in the US and she babysits Josh while waiting for her Green Card. Josh's mother is an artist who never comes out of her basement studio. Three months pass, and Tracy the artist comes upstairs suddenly.

An excerpt...
And now three months have passed. Three months of babysitting Josh. Three months of listening to Neil’s worries, of carrying out Neil’s anxiety-driven instructions, of growing a pitying affection for Neil. Three months of not seeing Tracy. At first Kamara was curious about this woman with dreadlocks and skin the colour of peanut butter who was barefoot in the wedding photo on the shelf in the den. Kamara wondered if and when Tracy left the basement. Sometimes she heard sounds down there, a door slamming shut or a brief burst of loud music. She wondered if Tracy ever saw her child. When she tried to get Josh to talk about his mother, he said, ‘Mummy’s very busy with her work. She’ll get mad if we bother her.’… Tracy’s existence became inconsequential, a background reality like the wheezing on the phone line when she called her mother in Nigeria. Until the Monday of last week.

-Read it in Granta 98

A very enjoyable edition this is. There's a photo essay of the Port Glasgow area of Scotland that's depressing to see, even before you read outgoing editor Ian Jack's accompanying piece about the region's history. Timely for the imminent smoking ban in the UK, there's a short story by Jackie Kay, "The Last of the Smokers" - in which two old friends mull over lost loves and consider whether to give up smoking. And above, a wonderfully honest personal sexual history by the 90-year-old Diana Athill, tracing her romantic companions from the beginning, to the last two men she consorted with. The very last, Sam, had served in the government of "the Redeemer" - Kwame Nkrumah.

A Letter

Dear Chimamanda,

The news of the award of the 2007 Orange BroadBand Prize for Fiction for your book, Half Of A Yellow Sun was received with joy by Nigerian Writers at home and abroad. This coming after your meteoric rise in literary circles in recent years has further confirmed our long-held belief in your excellent literary skills. With this award, you have become a beacon of hope to many Nigerian writers especially those who are still struggling in obscurity in spite of their commendable literary profiles.

May I on behalf of members of The Association Of Nigerian Authors extend a warm and hearty congratulations to you on this feat. We are sure that this is just the beginning of many more laurels in your literary career.

With very best wishes.

Wale Okediran
ANA President.

In Praise of...

In Praise of Chimamanda Adichie's 2007 Orange Prize

By Obiwu

The winning of the 2007 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's new novel, Half of a Yellow Sun 2006), is a matter for serious reflection.

Now we will have to address the significance of Adichie in contemporary Nigerian literary praxis. We will have to ask why Nigerian literature has been in the doldrums since Wole Soyinka's Nobel Prize in 1986 and Ben Okri's Booker Prize in 1991. What made the writing of the third generation's Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and Christopher Okigbo as globally commanding as the writing of the first generation's Olaudah Equiano? What made the writing of the second generation as weak as the writing of the fourth generation and much of the fifth generation?

Adichie has rediscovered the magic of great art and serious discourse. She has eschewed pretentiousness and self-flagellation; she has taken the bull by the horn, called a spade a spade, mocked national injustice and travesty, and given hope to the faint in spirit. She has not asked for charity and has not hidden her disgust for the debasing mess of porridge in which many self-adulating "writers" have stewed themselves.

Adichie prides herself as a child who was raised in the faculty house at Nsukka which was previously occupied by Achebe and Michael J. C. Echeruo. She has carved her art as "the branch of a giant fennel" which was the fountain of Achebe, Soyinka, and Okigbo's discursive thriller. Like the three elders she has drawn her subjects on a historical national dilemma. Her direct model in Africa is none other than Nadine Gordimer.

As Achebe says of Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart, Adichie has washed her hands and dined with elders. I toast Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's winning of the 2007 Orange Prize in honour of the one who "came almost fully made." I toast for the re-centering of serious discourse in Nigerian and African literature. I toast for the global acclaim of Half of a Yellow Sun and the emergence of Biafran Babies literature!

Obiwu

An Orange Revolution - in words & images

Chimamanda's Night of Glory
By Molara Wood

*published in This Day, 8 June 2007

As widely predicted, Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie triumphed at the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction on Wednesday night, winning the award for her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun.

Going to the Royal Festival Hall venue of this year's ceremony, one could be forgiven for missing one's way. The prestigious centre of the arts on the banks of the River Thames had been closed for some time, and scaffolding was still up around the building and doorways were sealed. Guests had to walk around the building. But once they got to the functioning entrance, it was splendour all the way. The Royal Festival Hall would be officially re-opened to the art-going public in just two days, but the Orange Prize Ceremony allowed a magnificent preview.

Two Olympic style flames burned on either side of the expansive orange carpet that led from the sidewalk into the venue, up the wide stairways and all the way to the Ballroom in the belly of the Royal Festival Hall, where it was all going to happen. It was already teeming with people, with more arriving by the minute. Made up mostly of writers and book lovers, it was at least a more representative crowd than the Shortlist Readings, which took place the night before in the Purcell Room, part of the same South Bank Complex that includes the Royal Festival Hall.

The Shortlist Readings of Tuesday 5th June saw a sold out audience made up of mostly middle class white women. And very few men. As for the blacks, there were only five; four women and one man. The reading went well, but the night ended on a sour note for Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who finished signing autographs only to find that her bag had been stolen. The author lost her personal effects and, painfully, a notebook in which she had written preparatory notes for her next novel.

But when Chimamanda arrived at the Orange ceremony, nothing in her bearing betrayed the upsetting loss of the night before. Wearing a cream dress with a bold red midriff sash made from the same material as her headwrap, she looked every inch a winner. It was a long road from the 2004 Orange Prize, for which Chimamanda was short-listed, for the first time, for her debut novel, Purple Hibiscus. She was relatively unknown then, and left empty handed as Andrea Levy scooped the prize. Much has happened since, and Chimamanda is now a bonafide literary celebrity in her own right on the international stage. And in the run up to this year's prize, British bookmakers William Hill and Ladbrokes made her the odds-on favourite to win. Chimamanda, still only 29, was the woman to beat.

'

As the ceremony began, Orange Prize co-founder and honorary director Kate Mosse, took the stage to declare that this year's was one of the best-selling shortlists ever. The paperback edition of Half of a Yellow Sun alone has sold 187,000 copies in Britain since its release in January. With a line-up including Kiran Desai (short-listed for her Booker Prize winning novel, The Inheritance of Loss) and Xiaolu Guo (for 'A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers'), Mosse told the gathering that this was also the most international shortlist ever, "with representatives from every continent."

Flying the flag for the whole of Africa, Chimamanda watched as the preliminary awards were announced. A trio of shortlisted authors, Guo, Rachel Cusk (Arlington Park) and Joanne Harris (The Observations) kept each other company nearby. Desai, wearing a stunning Indian sari, was further away in the gathering. Completing the shortlist of six was Anne Tyler (for Digging to America) who was not present. According to the chair of the judging panel Muriel Gray, Tyler is "notoriously reclusive and never leaves Baltimore." Representatives stood in for Tyler at the reading and at the award ceremony.

The Orange Award for New Writers came first, and it went to Karen Connelly for another war novel, "The Lizard Cage", set in Burma. As she read a prepared speech, I leaned over and asked Chimamanda if she too would read from a note on winning. The author replied that she had no speech prepared. "Being favourite is the kiss of death," she said. "I will not be surprised if I do not win."

We didn't have long to wait, because Muriel Gray was soon back on the stage to announce the big prize. "There is absolutely nothing controversial about this year's shortlist," she declared, informing that the judges (including seasoned profiler of African writers, Maya Jaggi) were unanimous in their choice of winner.

Then Chimamanda's name was called out, to sensational reactions in the Royal Festival Hall Ballroom. The author went on the stage to accept the limited edition winner's bronze statuette known as the "Bessie" drawing laughs when she declared herself happy to take home "this little thing with its cute breasts." She mentioned that, "Writing is the only thing I really care about," and added that she had to go and make a call to her family in Nigeria. Chimamanda's editor, Mitzi Angel, later described the author's onstage performance as "poised" and "controlled" - adding that, "She does the same in her writing. She is always thinking, and she cares deeply about her country. She will become one of the most important writers in the world."

In the razzle and dazzle of cheers and press photographs that immediately followed, Kiran Desai was the only shortlisted writer who got the chance to congratulate the new Orange prize winner before she was whisked away from the gathering for media formalities. Others would have to wait until her return, but the Nigerian writers who had come to support their own, were allowed to accompany her through a series of behind-the-scenes interviews and photo-calls. The Nigerian party comprised scholar/writer Wale Adebanwi, journalist Tolu Somolu and myself; all three of us were at the Orange ceremony three years before, when Chimamanda first appeared on the shortlist.

Poet Odia Ofeimun, fresh from his participation at the 12th International Poetry Festival in Cuba, had stopped over in London to attend the Orange ceremony. He said of Chimamanda's win, "It is a confirmation of what the world always knew, that good literature comes from Nigeria. She is a very good representation of the best that comes out of the country." Ofeimun added that, "There is this wise old woman's way to her youthfulness, which makes it imperative that we listen to her. The great thing is that she is very young and has a huge future ahead."

Adebanwi, who interviewed Adichie on the publications of both her books, said, "I am very excited because I knew it was only a matter of time for Chimamanda to win a big prize." He observed that, "She's got the capacity to tell the traditional African story by the moonlight with a refreshing modernity that is extremely powerful. We should be proud of her." Adebanwi felt that the theft of Chimamanda's handbag was strangely prescient. "Maybe losing her bag was an indication of a new story. What was taken away yesterday has been returned in a wonderful way today."

Chimamanda herself had seen the bag's loss as a bad omen. "I was thinking: this is not good." Winning the prize however, made her "very happy." She had come off the stage before realising that she didn't thank some people publicly, especially her editor Mitzi Angel. "Writing is something you do alone," Chimamanda said, "and it takes other people to help make things happen. I've been very fortunate to have Mitzi who understands my work."

The feeling is mutual for Mitzi, who never doubted that Chimamanda would reach the heights. "I feel very privileged to be publishing her." Asked if it had been a risky venture taking on a then little known Nigerian female writer, the editor replied, "I don't think of it in terms of risk. If someone's a good writer, it will become obvious to everyone. To me, Chimamanda was ahead of her game."

The author's publicist, Michelle Kane, had a strong feeling that she would win. "She is an extraordinary voice. It was time for her to be recognised and it was shown tonight. And she won it!"

And won it, she did. Asked what she thought her Orange triumph means, Chimamanda replied, "I hope it will open more doors, not just for Nigerian writers, but for African writers. I hope African writers will see this and think that they can do it too. I remember when I was looking for a graduate programme in the US, and I saw that Edwidge Danticat had been at the same place; I immediately felt that since she had been there, I would be fine too."

The Orange Prize recognises excellence in women's writing, and the author's mind went to her fellow Nigerian female writers. "We are taking over from the men!" she declared.

We the Nigerians present had unrestricted access as Chimamanda gave radio and television interviews. She answered questions and posed for photographs while we sent frantic text messages to writers and artists in Nigeria to communicate the news. Kate Mosse came in with the winner's £30,000 cheque, a part of the ceremony that had been accidentally missed out on the stage. And so we were among the few witnesses to the belated presentation of the cheque, which made it all the more special.

Prize-winning Zimbabwean writer Petina Gappah phoned through on my mobile and became the first to congratulate the new Orange winner by telephone. And there was still that phone call to the Adichie family to be made. But first, it was back to the ceremony in the Ballroom. Among those waiting to congratulate Chimamanda and talk with her, were: Zadie Smith (2006 Orange winner), Andrea Levy (2004 winner), Jackie Kay, Margaret Busby and John Agard. There was a wonderful evening ahead and - as many predicted on the night - a great future. In the end, it seemed clear that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Orange Prize triumph had never really been in doubt.

• Words & images © MW