An AfricaGiant popular novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie bags two doctorates degrees as Doctor of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa at Georgetown University and American University.
She is one of the most determined women of all times. The 41 years old renowned author and scholar has recently bagged two doctorate degrees from two US universities on the same week, where she shared photos in her ceremonial gown on her Instagram page.
Chimamanda was previously bagged an honorary degree – Doctor of Humane letters, honoris causa, by Johns Hopkins University in 2016. In 2017 she was conferred honorary degrees – Doctor of Humane letters, honoris causa, by Haverford College and The University of Edinburgh. Also, in 2018, she received an honorary degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, from Amherst College.
Born in Enugu, Nigeria and a writer of short stories, and nonfiction, Chimamanda is well known for her talented writing skills and also exudes a high fashion sense as she gives away on her Instagram page. She is noted for her proud African heritage reflected in her novels and fashion style.
According to report, her father James Nwoye Adichie was a professor of statistics at the University of Nigeria while her mother Grace Ifeoma was the university’s first female registra but with an extraordinary journey. During the Nigerian Civil War, in Abba at Anambra, her family’s ancestral village, the family lost almost everything including both maternal and paternal grandfathers.
However, she has achieved success out of her passion as a writer. She has written the novels Purple Hibiscus (2003), Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), and Americanah (2013), the short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck (2009), and the book-length essay We Should All Be Feminists (2014). Her most recent book, published in 2017, Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions.
Chimamanda left Nigeria for the United States at the age of 19 to study communications and political science at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Prior to moving to the US, she had completed her secondary education in Nigeria receiving several academic prizes. She also studied medicine and pharmacy at the University of Nigeria for one year and a half.
Chimamanda teaches writing workshops between Nigeria and the United States. Her inspiration came from Chinua Achebe, after reading late Prof. Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart”, at the age of 10. Adichie was inspired by seeing her own life represented in the pages.[29] Adichie published a collection of poems in 1997 (Decisions) and a play (For Love of Biafra) in 1998. She was shortlisted in 2002 for the Caine prize for her short story “You in America”, and her story “That Harmattan Morning” was selected as a joint winner of the 2002 BBC World Service Short Story Awards. In 2003, she won the O. Henry Award for “The American Embassy”, and the David T. Wong International Short Story Prize 2002/2003 (PEN Center Award). Her stories were also published in Zoetrope: All-Story, and Topic Magazine.
Her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), named after the flag of the short-lived nation of Biafra, is set before and during the Nigerian Civil War. It received the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. Half of a Yellow Sun has been adapted into a film of the same title directed by Biyi Bandele, released in 2014.
In 2010, Chimamanda was listed among the authors of The New Yorker′s “20 Under 40” Fiction Issue. Her third novel Americanah (2013), an exploration of a young Nigerian encountering race in America was selected by The New York Times as one of “The 10 Best Books of 2013”.
In a 2014 interview, Chimamanda said on feminism and writing “I think of myself as a storyteller but I would not mind at all if someone were to think of me as a feminist writer… I’m very feminist in the way I look at the world, and that world view must somehow be part of my work.”
In April 2017, it was announced that Chimamanda was elected into the 237th class of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the highest honours for intellectuals in the United States, as one of 228 new members to be inducted on 7 October 2017.
Chimamanda is greatly remembered on her remarkable speech on “The Danger of a Single Story” for TED in July 2009. It has become one of the top ten most-viewed TED Talks of all time with more than fifteen million views. Where she expressed her concerns for under-representation of various cultures. She explained that as a young child, she had often read American and British stories where the characters were primarily of Caucasian origin.
At the lecture, she highlighted the dangers: “Now, I loved those American and British books I read. They stirred my imagination and opened up new worlds for me. But the unintended consequence was that I did not know that people like me could exist in literature.”
Throughout the lecture, she used personal anecdotes to illustrate the importance of sharing different stories. One of her illustrations referred to the houseboy that worked for her family whose name is Fide and said the only thing she knew about him was how poor his family was. However, when Adichie’s family visited Fide’s village, Fide’s mother showed them a basket that Fide’s brother had made, making her realize that she created her opinion about Fide based on only one story of him.
She also said that when leaving Nigeria to go to Drexel University, she encountered the effects of the under-representation of her own culture. Her American roommate was shocked to have discovered that
Chimamanda was fluent in English and also did not listen to tribal music. She said of this: “My roommate had a single story of Africa: a single story of catastrophe. In this single story, there was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way, no possibility of feelings more complex than pity, no possibility of a connection as human equals.”
