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One of the things that struck me when I came to the U.S. was discovering American poverty.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Age: 47
Born: 1977
Born: January 1
Feminist
Novelist
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Things
Struck
Discovering
Poverty
Came
American
More quotes by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
To choose to write is to reject silence.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I would come, many years later, to understand why To Kill A Mockingbird is considered an important novel, but when I first read it at 11, I was simply absorbed by the way it evoked the mysteries of childhood, of treasures discovered in trees, and games played with an exotic summer friend.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The higher you go, the fewer women there are.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Perhaps it is time to debate culture. The common story is that in real African culture, before it was tainted by the west, gender roles were rigid and women were contentedly oppressed.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Why did people ask What is it about? as if a novel had to be about only one thing.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
It is easy to romanticize poverty, to see poor people as inherently lacking agency and will. It is easy to strip them of human dignity, to reduce them to objects of pity. This has never been clearer than in the view of Africa from the American media, in which we are shown poverty and conflicts without any context.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I am interested in challenging the mainstream ideas of what is beautiful and what is acceptable.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Your life belongs to you and you alone.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I didn't want to be apologetic about my love story, and I think to be willing to write about love you have to be willing to sound foolish. I wanted to write about foolish and goofy love and different relationships. I wanted to write about interracial relationships in a way that does not pretend as if race does not exist.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
My grandfather died in the war, my family went through the war, and it affected my parents in really profound ways. I've always wanted to write about that period - in some ways to digest it for myself, something that defined me but that I didn't go through.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Show a people as one thing, only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Culture does not make people - people make culture. So if it is in fact true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, we must make it our culture. [...] A feminist is a man or a woman who says, 'yes there is a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it. We must do better.'
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
When I'm in a good mood I like to cook. But I don't like saying it in public because I find myself being resentful of the idea Now you will make a good wife. You can cook, right? So when people ask me I go, No, I don't like cooking!
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Greatness depends on where you are coming from.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I like the U.S. and feel gratitude towards it.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
If I had not grown up in Nigeria- and if all I knew of Africa were of popular images- I too would think that africa was a place of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals and incomprehensible people fighting sensless wars, dying of poverty and aids- unable to speak for themselves and waiting to be saved by a kind white foreigner.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The idea that sex is something a woman gives a man, and she loses something when she does that, which again for me is nonsense. I want us to raise girls differently where boys and girls start to see sexuality as something that they own, rather than something that a boy takes from a girl.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Yes, there's a problem with gender as it is today, and we must fix it, we must do better.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
You can't write a script in your mind and then force yourself to follow it. You have to let yourself be.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I think human beings exist in a social world. I write realistic fiction, and so it isn't that surprising that the social realities of their existence would be part of the story.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie