Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Be The Change

hello it's so lovely to be here thank you thank you for that kind introduction it's always wonderful to be recognized and to get nice shiny Awards and it never gets old but it's particularly meaningful to get one from from an organization like the Women's Center that does such meaningful and such necessary work so thank you I feel very honored I have been writing since I was old enough to spell and writing is what I think of as my vocation it is what I was born to do I think of it as a gift that I was given and I also think of it as a choice that I made to do something with that gift but I grew up in a world where writing was not really considered aspirational what was considered aspirational was to be a doctor to be a lawyer so I grew up in a you know University campus the University of Nigeria in Sofia my family was very close-knit my childhood was happy but I was expected to become a doctor because when you do well in school you're expected to become a doctor and I am the fifth of six children and all the other children of my parents are very sensible and did the right thing and and my big sister rosemary who is here with me today became a doctor she's sitting over there and it was useful that she became a doctor because well I don't want to I want to tell the story chronologically so I did well in school and I was supposed to be a doctor but I I knew deep inside that what I really wanted to do was to tell stories I wanted to write and I was a great great reader and so I would read books and I would write little chat books for my mother and I wrote poetry and I wrote plays I just wanted to write but I also realized I had to be sensible and think about me earning a living and so I decided to go ahead and become a doctor and my aunt and my plan my plan was to become a psychiatrist and then to use my patients stories for my fiction so that was the plan and I say this with great respect for all therapists in the wall because they saved lives but I had planned to just use mine as a springboard for writing but and so I went to medical school in Nigeria for one year and I remember sitting in one of the biology classes in which we were dissecting frogs and I suddenly thought I don't want to do this because I was writing poetry at the back of my notebooks and I didn't care about the frogs that were being dissected actually I was quite grew stopped by them and so I decided that I was going to leave and and at the time really leaving meant leaving Nigeria because I had been in what is called the science track where they when you do well when in secondary school that put you in a track where you you're sort of in the class that takes chemistry and biology and physics because one of the sad things about the education system is that the arts are devalued and so it's considered something that people who don't do well in school do the arts which is such a terrible way of thinking about education but anyway and so I decided to leave and and leaving meant leaving Nigeria and I was very fortunate that my sister rosemary who sensibly had become a physician was now living in the US and walking as a physician and so I had somebody who would actually let me stay in her house and give me food and so I then took the exams I was fortunate to get a scholarship to go to a college in the US and so I came to the US and so really I came to the US because I was fleeing the study of medicine and I came to the US and I was so happy to get the chance to to take classes in literature and music and arts history and then to continue to write and I'm also really grateful to my sister Rosemary because she kindly supported me and really if she hadn't been here I don't know if I'd been if I had been able to if I'd been able to if I would have been able to leave Nigerian come here and I remember when I made that choice being told by relatives that it didn't make sense to leave the study of medicine and to get into medicine was very difficult very competitive and I had gotten in and nobody just leaves and people particularly don't leave because they don't think it's right for them people leave when they don't do well in the exams but I also remember thinking I want to try I want to try and if there's a moral to the story it's that one of the things I've learned since then is that it's always worth it to try because you just never know and fortunately it turned out well I graduated from college in the u.s. I had my first novel published shortly after I graduated I actually wrote my first novel when I was an undergraduate which was a terrible novel that nobody wanted to publish but it was also a learning experience for me because having been rejected so many times by publishers and agents I realized that that novel was false but I had not written something that came truly from my heart I had written the novel I thought that people wanted to read at the time this was maybe 2001 2000 I had been doing a lot of reading of contemporary literature and I noticed that many of the books that were sort of doing well we're sort of the immigrant story where the immigrant comes to the US and everything is wonderful and the immigrant loves everything about America because you know one thing about Americans is that they love to be loved and and so and so these books the immigrants were so grateful and the loved American and things are wonderful and so I wrote that version and instead of sort of the Chinese or the Indian or I just inserted the Nigerian characters but it was false it wasn't true and I'm so grateful that it was rejected many times and so after so many rejections I was I was sad and bereft but I put that aside and I started writing the novel that felt true to me I started writing a novel that was set mostly in Nigeria that was a community of age story that was about religion and politics and and love and it felt true to me and I had a difficult time getting it published because many publishers in the u.s. at the time didn't quite know what to do with somebody who had come from a country in Africa so somebody who was black but was not african-american and was writing about a country that people really didn't know about in Nigeria I remember I published a saying to me I really like your writing but nobody knows where Nigeria is and another very kind publisher agent actually said to me I don't know how to sell you because you're not like anything anybody else now if you were Indian I would say that you're the next I ruined that Sirois but you're not Indian and so when I got that note I started to think how can I make myself Indian I was so eager to be published I was willing to do anything like make me Indian but but finally I was fortunate to get an agent who said to me and I will never forget those words she said to me I am willing to take a chance on you and from there it went she and my she sold my novel to a publisher in two weeks and shortly after the novel was published I got the news that it was on the independent booksellers bestseller list which I hadn't expected at all I was so grateful to be published that that was enough I remember thinking five people are going to buy this novel four of them will be related to me and that's fine I'm grateful and so and so there was a sense in which I was just so happy because my standards weren't very high to start off with but but so so much has happened since then and I felt very fortunate and felt very grateful so much has happened that has led to things like me standing here in front of all of you lovely people and speaking but for me what's instructive is that I I did what felt true to me and and so one of the things I want to say if there's anybody here who's thinking I'm not sure it doesn't hurt to try and I often say to myself what's the worst thing that can happen right the thing about following what feels true to you doing what feels true to you is that it's not so much that it must always work out because sometimes it doesn't work out right sometimes the consequences that are not so great but the thing is you sleep well at night and you know that you did what felt true to you and I really think that that's very important since my first novel was published I went on to to write a second novel which which did really well and then a third novel Americana and then I also have given some talks and I've been startled that people actually watch them but I remember giving my second TED talk and my friend who was organized in this TED talk in London said to me we want you to come and speak and I said to him well I want to support your TED talk but I don't really have anything else to talk about I've talked about the one thing I really care about in my first TED talk which was called the danger of a single story which is about how important it is for us to to broaden our perspective and not depend on stereotypes so my friend said to me well there is the one thing that you're always lecturing us about and I said what and he said women's equality and at the time I hadn't realized that apparently among my family and friends I was known as the sometimes annoying lecturer on women's equality and so I said to him really he said yes you know and I thought all right I guess I have been passionate about women's equality I didn't know that I was lecturing my family and friends and so I decided that that you know that it was worth talking about now this TED talk was focused on Africa so it was in this huge auditorium in North London and it was full of mostly Africans and Friends of Africa and I remember thinking that feminism is not a word that is particularly popular among those people in fact I don't think feminism was a war that was particularly popular among anyone really in the world and I remember thinking they're going to be hostile it's not going to be a very warm and welcoming audience but this is really the only other thing that I care enough about to talk about and so I went in there having already put up a kind of mental r-mo but absolutely determined to talk about it and I remember also thinking that what I hope to do was to at least convince maybe two people out of the audience of a thousand that it was worth it to talk about the Equality of women how important it was and in a very simple and pragmatic way I I don't much care for theory I guess theory has its uses but I'm very interested in the ways that we can in fact that to change people's lives women's lives men's lives where we start to live in a world of real equality which is also a world I think will be of happier men and happier women and one of the ways I think that that's important is that we have to start to raise children differently if to raise girls differently and boys differently that we need to start to redefine masculinity I mean right now this definition of masculinity is something where men always have to be strong and it's so terrible I think that we need to start to let little voice cry expect them to cry expect them to vulnerable and we also have to let little girls know that it's okay for boys to cry and so I gave this talk and I was hoping nobody would throw stones at me but they didn't thankfully and but I was struck that at the end of it they all rose up and clapped and I and I'm not even joking I sort of looked behind me and I was like wait who but and and for me again it was another proof I'm not sure if proof is the right word but it was it was for me a sense of affirmation that it's always worth it tell your truth it's always worth it to do what feels true to you it's always worth it to try because you never know now I went in there expecting that they would boo but I was willing to take that because I knew that even if they booed I had spoken my truth I had said what I deeply cared about and I would go home and sleep well at night thank you so I'm I need to end on that note but I just want to say again how wonderful it is to be here how wonderful it is to be honored how deeply grateful I am and how been in a room full of women just always makes me happy thank you and some men Wow I have been so looking forward to meeting you this is great please keep the I mean we as part of this committee we also get it invite the people we admire the most in the world and so your name came up and all of us on the committee have a book club and we've all read your books so it's just it's amazing to have you here keep those questions coming ladies and gentlemen I do have some starter questions for you and you know listening to you speak about your upbringing which wasn't full of violence and then knowing about our mission which is to help women and families who go through that I wondered when you wrote the Purple Hibiscus which is so full of family ruled by the father's violence my dominance how not having experienced that personally were you able to write that when I read that book I just it was like I was every night like it held me in a cocoon it was so intense how did you do that I think because I've always been interested in in domestic violence my family my father and and my poor father when the novel came out in Nigeria people were looking at him very suspiciously because in the novel there's a father character who's terribly abusive and so I would often start my public events by saying disclaimer here's my father has the gentlest kindest man in the wall I adore him he's 86 years old and he's just wonderful but I I've always been interested because I watched the world and I saw I saw what was happening around me I I knew of a woman who lived on the campus where I lived whose husband beat her and just in the most for me what was saddest was how she would then lie about it and defend him in public in that way that abuse is not just about the physical it's also about what it does to women mentally and and so I was always interested in that and I kind of wanted to explore that idea of of how abuse doesn't end with the physical how it effects the children how it affects a woman's sense of herself so that in the novel the character stays on and but it took it took you know but also I I do think that had I lived in a world of domestic violence I'm not sure I could even write about it I mean I don't know but I'm not sure because I think it's such a difficult thing yes yes yes so that leads me to the next question how do you pick your your stories you know what inspires you do you wake up one morning and like at the street sometimes it often happens in the shower which has led so many showers being cut short so what the implications of that but I you know I'm I I think some writers I inspired by art and by other written work some writers are inspired by people and unlife and I think I'm in the latter category I'm very interested in people I am endlessly curious I asked often inappropriate questions of people because I think that the role of the writer who writes realistic fiction that set in the real world is constantly to acquire information and I watch people I notice the tiniest things about people I invent lives for them I sit in cafes and I eavesdrop the conversations of the people next to me this is very important and for anybody here who wants to write I really recommend its drop-in because you just you you pick up the most fantastic thing and you and I write it down usually in a notebook or in my phone now and then and sometimes that becomes the kernel that starts the story really it can come from anywhere I love airports in particular because there's something that's so beautiful about watching people saying goodbye and watching people reuniting I find that to be it really just captures that wonderful human essence sometimes there's the droop in a man's shoulders after he said goodbye to family members then there's just the incredible joy of people who are hugging and I watch the money I imagine lives for them wanna sit next to her at the airport dude I'm gonna make up this like wild love to store so you've traveled all over the world and do you have a favorite place and if so why hmm well really my favorite place is Nigeria but that's kind of unbalanced because it's home but a place that isn't Nigeria there's so many places I love Nairobi in Kenya because there's something a gentleness to it but also an energy I really like Oslo in Norway it might be because I have a dear friend who's Norwegian but I just really like Oslo and I like wandering around in Oslo and I love Philadelphia because it wasn't anybody fight Philadelphia was my first it was the first place in the u.s. where I lived alone and I kind of grew up and became an adult really and I think it's a very beautiful city so I love it mmm that's great so I just got a question which kind of builds on this and it the the person asking says you know Nigeria is such a large country such a big population such diversity in poverty and wealth and not well understood often as you mentioned is there something you'd like to say about your country of origin your your background that you would like us to know about help us understand read my books have read other Nigeria but it's not just mine but he is very diverse it's difficult but I suppose if I didn't want to say one thing it would be that it's not just about Boko Haram I think that when I do I gets covered in the news in the u.s. it's always about to do girls were abducted which is terrible but there's so much more about about that country and and that sometimes it can in fact feel like two different countries and from southern Nigeria and I'm not an idea I can often feel quite almost exotic to me and and sometimes people don't understand that so they expect me to explain all of Nigeria and in many ways I can't which I in some ways I think is this you know I'm not sure that somebody who's from Boston can necessarily explain Alabama fair point fair boy so very true right we have to just explain ourselves to the world so given your tremendous success how has it changed you I haven't changed you I like to think not right but on the other hand it's it's difficult to say because I think maybe some things have changed some five years ago I wouldn't have people sort of recognize me a second I took a picture which I still find very cool but I think fundamental things you think that that makes me fundamentally Who I am hasn't changed which is that I'm I'm still curious endlessly curious about the world about people I'm still a reader I'm still I still sit up my desk and I'm incredibly anxious that I will not be able to write a good sentence and that has always been a part of my creative process and that still happens every time oh you need that tension right before the next thing spring yeah that's what you that's the thing one tells oneself to feel better about it but when you're uncertain see is part of the creative process but when you're there sitting at that desk and the page is blank you're terrified you know you're not thinking this is part of the creative process from weave which will spring the wonderful short story I love this question thank you it says your inner joy is so inspiring please share your secret [Laughter] [Applause] [Music] I don't know well I think I'm fortunate to have I have I really do have the most wonderful supportive family in the world and I think that had I not been raised by my parents I'm surrounded by their love and the love of my five siblings I don't think I would be Who I am there is a sand particularly now with success and with with becoming a public figure which which has its ups and downs but I feel very secure knowing that I have these people behind me so in some ways it's like having a cushion in my back but I know that they're always there and I have a small circle of very close friends who are just really the most wonderful people and I think I think that's it I also have a two and a half year old daughter who was the light of my life and I should also say because we're in the context of sort of the Women's Center which helps with mental illness but I also suffer from depression and and I think this is true for many people who are creative and it took a long time for me to come to a place where I in fact made peace with being a person who has depression and for whom depression will always be a part of my life but it but it's about managing it and and I am fortunate to have care and I manage it and but I also think that just having my two and a half year old she's one of the better depression medicines that I have thank you for sharing that I'm sure that's not an easy but I think yes but I'm very much interested in in D stigmatizing depression another question came up so when you write of course you do write sentences in Nigerian your characters say things in an indigenous language would you ever consider writing an entire book in an indigenous African language in Ybor which is mine only whenever so I think there may be four or five EBU people here so I'm going to proceed to say very unkind things about the entire room I I have thought about it I'm actually thinking seriously about writing a children's book we my husband and I are raising our daughter bilingual sushi we speak only boo to her at home and she's just out of preschool so she's you know speaking English there because we just think it's a gift to give a child to be bilingual and so I've been thinking about writing a children's book in a book I because I was educated entirely in English in Nigeria education it's entirely in English I don't really I speak Hebrew very well but it boys the language of family and love and laughter it's not really a language in which I can make the philosophical arguments because I don't really I'm not I don't really know how to so I don't know that I could write a full adult novel in Hebrew but I'm really thinking about writing a children's book look forward to that and hopefully there'll be an English version I see a war a concurrent session next year where we're going to be translating that book together when it's ready so what are you reading now so much I read many books at the same time that I'm reading a collection of essays by Elizabeth Hardwick who I adore I think she is just marvelous I'm also reading a history of Nigeria always doing that so I'm doing some research I'm reading poems by an african-american writer called Terrence Hayes who is sublime and I have just finished oh Lord I just it's it's a book set in and it's so wonderful I really want to recommend it it's certain in the Palestine it's sort of its it follows a family a Palestinian family over about 80 years believe I don't remember I just finished it remember what it's called can I remember and it's such a wonderful book and the reason I want to talk about it so it's the power of literature how literature can can humanize things so after reading that novel you you cannot but look differently at the news when you see what's being covered you start to realize that actual people whose lives are actually being what is it's funny how these questions just build right at the right time what is the limit on how deep you will go in your writing about sort of a stopping point where its boundaries no but I think that this is why I often say that I trust fiction more than I trust nonfiction which is to say that as a writer I feel that fiction gives me space to be as radically honest as I need to be but nonfiction requires putting up boundaries because I want to protect people I love I want to protect myself so when I'm writing about myself even though the eye is a character you're very much aware of of how you want the reader to respond to you and so you shape it in a particular way right but when I write in fiction I just I'm in the world of the characters and there's a kind of radical honesty that fiction allows me to do and I will write about anything and actually as a reader I find that I don't like I don't like books that feel too safe I don't like books where you can tell that the writer is holding back because because literature should be about a kind of truth where you go there go there so I don't think I would hold myself back from writing about I will follow whatever story calls me do you feel like sometimes you just you're part of the story yes sometimes I absorb when my writing is going well it's the thing that makes me so happy I it's almost like being transported and then you don't realize how much time has passed and and that's actually that only times when I'm really fun to be around the rare times it's a question here that says you are a beautiful style icon exclamation mark exclamation any thoughts on representation for African girls black girls any any thoughts you know sort of taking on thoughts of African girls black girls that black girls are gorgeous and that I'm very but if I really I had to be reborn I would choose to have the skin colour because black don't crack but but I mean I made the choice when I started out writing when I when I studied it when I was first published actually when I came to the US I realized that that there's often a distinction made between a woman whose intellectual and a woman who's interested in her appearance in style in fashion that if you wanted to be considered as serious intellectual you couldn't then also admit publicly to like in fashion or like in makeup and so for a few years I pretended that I didn't like the things I liked I grew up in a family my mother is a beautiful woman who very much cares about appearance she would dress us up properly all the time actually sometimes I think she was disappointed in me because I don't think she felt I was stylish enough and and so when I came to the US I started to pretend I didn't wear high heels because I felt that that kind of meant I wasn't a serious intellectual and I was so keen to be taken seriously and a few years ago I started to think about it and I thought there young women coming after me who are also serious intellectuals who are interested in history and politics and ideas and also like fashion and makeup and hair whatever and I think it's important to start to create a world where women and girls are allowed to be many things you know that and where we start to those things that are considered traditionally feminine that we stop making them something shameful and so I made the choice to come out [Laughter] [Applause] constantly asked how do you explain your interest in fashion I like walking in high heels thank you very much but but I hope that for women coming after me that the young women that it will be different that you know that was fundamental it's that idea of not judging a woman by her appearance right that but a woman if she chooses to wear a sack and no makeup and let her grace show good for her if she chooses to wear high heels and the brightest red lipstick god bless her you know we need to have that range and have it mean nothing [Applause] you know it's interesting I had a question here about how feminism has changed in your opinion and I think you just hit on a really important piece it is not what feminism started out to be you can be everything you are fashionable interesting absolutely absolutely and we need we need to push more on that because this idea that you know to be feminist means you don't shave and you you and and I think I think actually and by the way not shaving is fine right I really think you don't want to shave don't bloody she you know but but but not really that for me that the thing that I find myself questioning is that the fundamental premise to all of that is that for the way for a woman to be taken seriously is is how well she approximates a kind of meal Milnes right so if you were if you kind of look like the German Chancellor Angela Merkel who sort of I mean God bless and that's not choice but I think that that is the idea of what a feminist should be that you don't care you you kind of wear so that looks like a man suit and it can't be feminine in any way and you you have to look and I think that even that is an unfamiliar idea because the whole idea of feminism is that we recognize that men and women are different otherwise that that in fact is the cause for the oppression of women because they're not men but that we shouldn't then say that for women to be equal that they have to have proximate maleness know they remain women and you take them as equals that's what it should be oh we might have gotten a little help on that book title the way to the spring or Once Upon a country is that the book you the book you were talking about the eighty years of the spring no that's not it no the way to the spring no okay moving on I think it has house yes yes yes yes that's it yes we feel better now well final question what is the most important advice you would give to someone who isn't an inspiring aspiring writer right I think I think many people who want to write spend a lot of time thinking about wanting to write and the thing about writing is just get to it make the time it's you know 30 minutes a day sit there sometimes the page you were blunt but sit there and try and make it happen write and read it's impossible to be a good writer if you're not a good reader I just I think it's impossible read widely read to know what you don't like because that's as important as knowing what you like and then tried very hard to sound like neither what you like or what you don't like sound like you well did you write are practiced uh you have just reminded us the jumping into your passion is a really good thing just jump even if it's the water you'll rise up yes and you won't drown in a way and giving a voice to your truth no matter what to change stereotypes and to make an impact in the world and think you keep keep those books coming for all of us and thank you for your time thank you thank you all so much you

Channel: The Women's Center

Views: 154,611

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Length: 35min 20sec (2120 seconds)

Published: Mon May 07 2018