Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s biography: A Prominent Feminist Voice of the 21st Century
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian author who was born in Enugu on September 15, 1977. The late 1960s Biafran conflict in Nigeria served as a major inspiration for much of her writing.
Adichie, the fifth of six children, relocated to Nsukka, Nigeria, at a young age with her parents. After briefly studying medicine in Nsukka, she emigrated to the United States in 1997 to attend Eastern Connecticut State University to study political science and communication (B.A., 2001). She studied African history at Yale University while dividing her time between Nigeria and the US, thereafter earning a master’s degree in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University.
The play For Love of Biafra by Adichie was released in Nigeria in 1998. It was among her earlier works that examined the conflict between Nigeria and its breakaway Biafra nation in the late 1960s; she later described it as “an incredibly melodramatic play.” Ultimately, she created a number of short tales about that battle, which would later serve as the basis for her hugely popular book Half of a Yellow Sun (2006).
She started working on her debut book, Purple Hibiscus, while still a student at Eastern Connecticut State University (2003). It is a coming-of-age tale of Kambili, a 15-year-old from an affluent and well-respected family in Nigeria who is terrified by her fervently religious father. In 2005, Purple Hibiscus won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book (Africa) and that year’s Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book (overall).
You must never behave as if your life belongs to a man. Do you hear me?” Aunty Ifeka said. “Your life belongs to you and you alone.<span class="su-quote-cite">Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun</span>
The drafting and research for Adichie’s second book, Half of a Yellow Sun (2006; 2013 film), took four years. It was mostly based on her parents’ experiences during the Nigeria-Biafra war. The outcome was an epic novel that, although concentrating on a small cast of individuals, primarily middle-class Africans, eloquently captured the brutality of the conflict (which caused the relocation and death of probably a million people). In 2007, Half of a Yellow Sun won the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction and went on to become a best-seller on a global scale. A unique reward for the “best” prizewinner from the prior decade, the “Best of the Best” Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, was given to her eight years later.
Adichie was awarded a MacArthur Foundation scholarship in 2008. She published The Thing Around Your Neck, a collection of short stories, the following year to rave reviews.
Awarded membership in the esteemed American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the highest honours for intellectuals in the US, Adichie has been named one of the greatest authors under the age of 40.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has given a number of talks, including her appearance on TED, which garnered a lot of attention. She gave the “Connecting Cultures” 2012 Commonwealth Lecture as well as a discussion on feminism, which was turned into a book and served as the basis for Beyonce’s hit song “Flawless.”
