Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Quotes (1977-)

“My father tells a story about his father dying in a refugee camp. His father was a titled man in Igboland, which meant that he was a great man. He had one of the highest titles a man could have. But his hometown fell, so he had to leave and go to a refugee camp, and he died and he was buried in a mass grave. Which is just heartbreaking for a man, particularly a man like him. My father, who's the first son, and who takes his responsibilities very seriously, couldn't go to bury his father because the roads were occupied. He was in a different part of Biafra and so it took a year until ... he could go to the refugee camp. ... And he goes there and he says, 'I want to know where my father was buried.' And somebody waved very vaguely and said, 'Oh we buried the people there.' So it was a mass grave. So many people had died. And my father says he went there and he took a handful of sand, and he said he's kept the sand ever since. For me, that was one of the most moving things I had ever heard."”

“I do reread novels I love, like Chinua Achebe’s “Arrow of God,” to remind myself of what fiction can do.”

“I love the opulent poetry of Tishani Doshi and the more formal work of Derek Walcott and Christian Wiman.”

“(Has a book ever brought you closer to another person, or come between you?) A friend once called “The Shadow of the Sun,” by Ryszard Kapuscinski, an “authentic” reportage voice on Africa. I disagreed. I think it is a fictional portrait masquerading as nonfiction, about an Africa that he wanted to see rather than one he actually saw. It misrepresents many practices and beliefs in different countries, and its many generalizations about “the African” are fatuous. To this, the friend said that it didn’t matter if he got the facts wrong because the book was really an allegory of communism. It was eye-opening for me, and made me see this friend differently, because of the paternalism in that opinion. If I were to write a nonfiction book riddled with inaccuracies about Europe and then insisted that it really was an allegory on military dictatorship in Nigeria, few would find that acceptable and fewer still would praise it as the authentic voice on Europe.”

“My father tells a story about his father dying in a refugee camp. His father was a titled man in Igboland, which meant that he was a great man. He had one of the highest titles a man could have. But his hometown fell, so he had to leave and go to a refugee camp, and he died and he was buried in a mass grave. Which is just heartbreaking for a man, particularly a man like him. My father, who's the first son, and who takes his responsibilities very seriously, couldn't go to bury his father because the roads were occupied. He was in a different part of Biafra and so it took a year until ... he could go to the refugee camp. ... And he goes there and he says, 'I want to know where my father was buried.' And somebody waved very vaguely and said, 'Oh we buried the people there.' So it was a mass grave. So many people had died. And my father says he went there and he took a handful of sand, and he said he's kept the sand ever since. For me, that was one of the most moving things I had ever heard."”

“(Whose writing today most inspires you?) Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s work — both fiction and nonfiction...”