Latest news with #PurpleHibiscus
Indian Express
19-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's fiction redefines how we read women
Bold, unflinching, and deeply rooted in both the personal and the political. That's how I describe Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's work. She dismantles all-too-familiar stories, rebuilds them, and then asks us to sit with the discomfort. Whether through fiction, essays, or public talks, the Nigerian writer has steadily redefined how female voices, especially African ones, are represented in literature. Her work doesn't simplify, sanitise, or apologise; it demands to be felt. Her debut, Purple Hibiscus (2003), is written through the eyes of a young girl navigating the shadows of religion and domestic violence. Adichie introduced a kind of storytelling that was restrained but piercing; the language was lyrical, the emotions bruising. It was a debut that promised more and delivered. With Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), she turned her gaze to the Biafran War, offering a panoramic yet intimate portrait of love, survival, and betrayal. The novel, which won the Orange Prize for Fiction, centred not just the politics of the time, but the women who endured it. They were complex, fierce, and deeply human and never reduced to collateral or cliché. But it was Americanah (2013) that truly made Adichie a global literary name. Through the story of Ifemelu – a Nigerian woman who migrates to the US – she explored what it means to move across continents, identities, and cultures. With unflinching honesty, she unpacked race, hair, class, immigration, and belonging. The writing was observational, sometimes uncomfortable, often funny but always real. The New York Times named it one of the top ten books of the year. Outside of fiction, Adichie's voice has echoed just as loudly. Her TEDx talk 'We Should All Be Feminists' became a cultural moment, later adapted into a slim essay that found its way into classrooms, Instagram captions, and even Beyoncé's music. What made it resonate was its clarity. She wasn't lecturing, she was inviting. Her feminism wasn't rigid or academic. It made room for contradiction and evolution. There's a line in that essay early on, where she writes: 'I am trying to unlearn many lessons of gender I internalised while growing up, but I sometimes still feel vulnerable in the face of gender expectations.' It's a quiet confession, but it hits hard. Adichie isn't interested in presenting a perfect feminism. She's more interested in a real one. Her follow-up, Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, is written as advice to a friend raising a daughter. It's practical, warm, and deeply personal. Like much of her work, it's not trying to go viral; it's trying to connect. What sets Adichie apart is that she doesn't write women to prove a point or make them palatable. She writes them to be. There's no manufactured girlboss energy, no sloganeering and no faux-edginess. Her female characters are smart, sometimes confused, and often contradictory. They crave love and freedom, career and children, and they're never punished for wanting it all. Their dualities are part of what makes them real. She avoids the academic jargon that can often gatekeep feminist conversations. Instead, she writes with anecdotes, observations, and an unwavering sense of honesty. 'I write because I have to,' she once said. 'Because I believe that fiction can illuminate truth.' And she does exactly that, often with a kind of quiet conviction that lingers long after the last page. Kambili, Olanna, Ifemelu – her women aren't metaphors or mouthpieces. They're layered, flawed and alive who resist easy narratives. They are not written to inspire; they are written to exist, and that, in itself, is radical.
Hindustan Times
26-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Book Review: Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie paints a true picture of grief through immigrant lives
Since her dazzling debut, Purple Hibiscus, announced her as a literary force in 2003, author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has worn many hats — novelist, essayist, cultural critic. Yet each of her new works manages to somehow deepen our understanding of her unique voice. With her latest work, Dream Count, Adichie returns not just to fiction but also to the intimate terrain of memory, identity, and grief; threading these themes through the lives of four immigrant women. At its heart, her new book is a quiet powerhouse. It is Adichie, doing what she does best: capturing the inner weather of her characters with prose so elegant it almost glides past you until it punches you in the gut. The novel unfolds through four interwoven narratives. There's Chiamaka (Chia) — a Nigerian travel writer marooned in the US by the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic — but we quickly realise that marooned isn't quite the right word. Chia chooses to stay, clinging to the messy safety of disconnection, even as her family pleads for her return. Then there's Zikora – Chia's steely friend and a successful lawyer – juggling courtrooms and personal silence. Omelogor, Chia's cousin – trades finance for academia, chasing a degree — and goes for something like a reinvention in a landscape that rarely offers clean slate for women. Finally, there's Kadiatou – Chia's Guinean housekeeper – whose story is reminiscent of real-life events relating to the emotionally thunderous case of a New York hotel housekeeper named Nafissatou Diallo. Through these women, Adichie crafts a kaleidoscope of the overlooked immigrant experience during the pandemic. The lives of these women overlap in subtle and profound ways, echoing the novel's deeper concern with how we connect and disconnect, how we remember and forget, and most piercingly, how we grieve! Adichie has spoken of this book as being 'really about my mother,' and it shows. There's a personal weight humming beneath each chapter, not in overt autobiographical detail, but in the novel's aching awareness of loss and the disorienting stillness that often follows. Set against the global stillness of the pandemic, Dream Count becomes both a time capsule and an elegy. The book pulses with contradictions of real life as moments of loneliness are laced with humour and silence holds space for unsaid love. The trauma often hides in the small, quiet things such as a dinner left uneaten, or a voicemail never returned. But perhaps the most remarkable achievement is how this work of writing sneaks up on you. It's not loud, not even plot-driven in the traditional sense yet by the end you realise something profound has shifted within the characters, and maybe within yourself as well. Title: Dream Count Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Publisher: HarperCollins Price: ₹599
CBC
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
How Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie subverts expectations of traditional Nigerian women
WARNING: This article and audio interview may affect those who have experienced sexual violence or know someone affected by it. The wait is over for Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's hugely anticipated return to fiction. Known for her detailed representation of Nigerian women and culture, Dream Count follows four women who live large on the page and resonated deeply with two Canada Reads alumni, Kudakwashe Rutendo and Mirian Njoh. Adichie is the bestselling author of novels Purple Hibiscus, Half of A Yellow Sun and Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction in 2013. Since then, Adichie has turned to nonfiction, writing powerful essays that became Ted Talks and short books, including We Should All Be Feminists, which was sampled in Beyoncé's song Flawless and inspired a T-shirt from Dior. Dream Count is Adichie's return to fiction after 12 years and it weaves the perspectives of four women, moving between Nigeria, Guinea and the United States. Rutendo and Njoh reunited on The Next Chapter with Antonio Michael Downing to discuss the complex feelings and reflections the women of Adichie's fiction brought up. For those that have been living under a literary rock, what can you tell us about Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie? Kudakwashe Rutendo: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a polarizing Nigerian American writer. Her breakout Americanah made huge waves in the literary world and then it was felt like Americanah, Half of the Yellow Sun, her prose is singular and she manages to invoke so much of being Nigerian American, or just being Nigerian into her writing and showing the culture and viewing it in an honest way where you're not coddling it — you're showing its best parts, you're critiquing it. I think that's the honest way to love if you're showing the deficits and the whole parts all in one and she manages to illuminate that in her prose and in her work. And in a subtle way as well where the culture is the writing. She's been on the scene forever and we've been waiting for this book forever. She manages to invoke so much of being Nigerian American into her writing ... in an honest way. Mirian, there are four women in this book. I've heard it described as four interlocking novellas. Each section is about one of these women. First up, we meet Chiamaka and as the title suggests, she's tallying up her dream count, the men that she's loved and lost. What kind of entry did she give you into this novel? Mirian Njoh: I think she was a great opener because I think was the strongest voice to me. Her story stuck with me the greatest and it's interesting 'cause each of them has different themes that stood out very strongly and hers always seemed to me to be the idea of pursuit. On a superficial level, she's a travel writer, so there's just a level of pursuit and going to different places and exploring and capturing and documenting. But she also has that same fervor for seeking and pursuit in her personal life and in the loves that she's seeking. And it's interesting how she flips the notion of a body count, which is something that's often weaponized against women, particularly, and she turns it into a dream count when she recalls the past loves of her life and the love that she's been seeking in these people. Three of the main characters move between Nigeria and America as Chimamanda Adichie does herself. The three women are connected by friendship and family and they're all struggling to some extent with this same stuff. They're all trying to find something, some degree of being seen and almost always by men because they see each other really well. What brings those three characters together in terms of what they're seeking? MN: What you're saying is they're seeking to be, to love, to be loved and to be seen. And I think that is kind of the beauty of the way that their stories are interwoven and I think that their stories are truly dependent on each other, they each sustain each other. Because when you look outside of the bubble of these three women and the safety, the love, the vulnerability and just the rawness that exists between them, they are truly themselves with each other. But then you look at their chosen family dynamic and then you look at their biological family dynamics or even their cultural dynamics and you see how they can't fit. Some of them are actively avoiding their parents and siblings, actively avoiding their aunts. Even with one of the characters who leaves Nigeria and she seeks respite in the U.S., ironically enough, she doesn't find it. They're seeking to be, to love, to be loved and to be seen. - Mirian Njoh There's a clash here because they are essentially very non-traditional women who are trying to do a very traditional thing, which is fall in love, get married, have a baby, things like things around that. KR: I also wonder if this might be a new traditional way to be a woman because I'd also say that a lot of their values were distinct from just clear cut Western values. It was interesting. One of my cousins got traditionally married so it was funny for me weighing the values of that. There is a difference. I feel like these women go against the traditional grain in many ways and I think they also subvert the Western grain as well because they're Nigerian. There's a class thing happening here … but there's also a gender thing going on here, right? KR: I don't think we can talk about being a traditional Igbo culture, but also any African culture without getting into gender politics because they're so ingrained in gendered roles and gendered expectations and even in this book, it's a huge aspect. And I think it's often what the women are rebelling against or sometimes falling into because it's their safety. It's what you understand. I think it's often what the women are rebelling against or sometimes falling into because it's their safety. MN: It's interesting if we look at our outlier Kadiatou and we think about gender because on one hand, I would say she is, in the most extreme sense, subject to gender practices because she undergoes female genital mutilation. But then that also ends up being part of the key that gets her to this next phase of her life, this thing that in a way is like her American Dream. But then the ironic thing is that once again, that whole dynamic of her gender comes into play when she ends up embroiled in a sexual assault scandal. Her identity and character is assassinated and she is called so many things, a con artist, a prostitute. And we see the system really ring her out. Do you also seek a "merging of souls", as Chiamaka says? KR: I think that everyone should seek fulfillment and I say this knowing that I don't believe that… Also, I don't think it was the message of the book. What really got to me is this idea of a dream count. I was like, it's just not disqualifying the affections that we felt. I think oftentimes you're focused on ends like it had to have been a relationship or it had to have been fulfilling, or we have to have dated or just all these things that are so inconsequential. For me, it was like all the things that make you tender, you should honour them. All the people who have given you any tenderness. WATCH | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on Bookends with Mattea Roach: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
CBC
11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Mother-daughter relationships shape Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's return to fiction
In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's latest novel, Dream Count, her character Chiamaka is found alone in the pandemic, reflecting on her past relationships that didn't go the distance. She looks back at all the men she's been with, not as a body count, but as a dream count, as in the dreams of a life together never realized. Despite some of the questionable men of her past, Chiamaka is still holding out hope for a relationship in which she is fully known by someone else — and tries to learn about herself from the frictions of her entanglements. For Adichie, the isolation of COVID was the perfect backdrop for Chiamaka to undergo this introspection. "It makes you aware of your own mortality," said Adichie on Bookends with Mattea Roach. "It gives you an opportunity to look inward in a way that ordinary life just doesn't." However, the idea of being known by someone else can be elusive, she said, because it's almost impossible to totally know oneself. In her own life, the sudden death of her father during lockdown showed her versions of herself she didn't recognize. She explained that she saw herself as someone who reacts to difficult situations by "going cold" — but upon hearing that her father died, she was "taken aback by the melodrama" of her response. "I threw myself down on the ground and I was pounding, pounding the floor and did not realize I was doing this. I was just so overtaken by the devastation of the news." "I was surprised that I had reacted in that way," she said. "And so I started thinking about how much I knew myself and the idea that we can surprise ourselves and we do surprise ourselves." Coming back to fiction The bestselling author of novels Purple Hibiscus, Half of A Yellow Sun and Americanah, Adichie was born in Nigeria and now splits her time between there and the United States. Americanah won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction in 2013, but since then, Adichie has turned to nonfiction, writing powerful essays that became Ted Talks and short books, including We Should All Be Feminists, which was sampled by in Beyoncé's song Flawless and inspired a t-shirt from Dior. Dream Count is Adichie's return to fiction after 12 years and it weaves the perspectives of four women, moving between Nigeria, Guinea and the United States. She dedicates the book to her mother, who died in March 2021. And whereas her grief for her father left her grappling for language, she said that losing her mother actually brought her back to fiction. "You're so unwilling to accept something that it then forces a different kind of eloquence on you," Adichie said. "I really think that my mother, in a kind of strange and spiritual way, I feel as though she kind of helped me start writing because she realized that I might go mad if I didn't." You're so unwilling to accept something that it then forces a different kind of eloquence on you. Unwittingly, Dream Count became a novel about the power of platonic love, celebrating female friendships and mother-daughter relationships. "I did not even realize how much of the book was about mothers and daughters until I was almost done and I went back and read what I had," said Adichie. "My mother's spirit is here, I thought. In a more prosaic way, I'm dealing with my issues." The mothers and daughters in Dream Count love each other very much — but sometimes don't understand each other — yet are there to support one another when times are difficult. "Part of my grieving process has been regret because I think that there are times when I was short with my mother in ways that I did not need to be and it made me think about how mother-daughter relationships can be much more complicated and sometimes unnecessarily thorny than daughter-father relationships." Lessons from motherhood Adichie also now has a daughter and twin boys, an experience that has taught her a lot about herself. "I've learned that I'm not endlessly patient," she said, laughing, and explained how powerful her feelings for her children are — a love and obsession that she could never have imagined. But beyond that love for them, she's also gained a level of uncertainty that fuels her. "I think I'm less smug and also slightly less sure," she said. "That has been good for me. Even just as a writer, there's a kind of uncertainty that I think feeds creativity." "I'm still self-confident and I don't apologize for that. But maybe it's that terror at the heart of loving children. I'm just constantly worried about my children. I think it does something to you and I think I like what it's done for me." While becoming a mother did help Adichie get closer to knowing herself, she's still uncertain about who she really is — and so are the characters in Dream Count. "It just feels to me that it's something that we will always long for and never quite get there," she said. "But maybe the longing is the point."
The Guardian
04-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Chimamanda effect: Nigerians delight at first novel in a decade from their beloved daughter
When Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie asked participants at her annual writers' workshop in Lagos to introduce themselves, one woman was so excited to be close to her idol that she immediately burst into tears. 'She asked someone to get me water and my heart just melted,' says writer and actor Uzoamaka Power. '[That workshop] was one of the best moments of my life.' That was June 2015 and the 25-year-old Power had read 'every single thing' Adichie had written but most deeply connected with Purple Hibiscus, the 2003 novel partly set in the Nsukka campus of the University of Nigeria where Power had studied. Now 34 and a Nollywood star, Power is brimming with anticipation ahead of the release of Dream Count, a long-awaited new novel from Adichie whose last book, Americanah, came out in 2013. In fiecely patriotic Nigeria, Adichie, regarded as one of the greatest writers of the 21st century, has reached folk hero status. While her feminist stances have made her a divisive figure among some, her simple to digest style and insistence on writing about everyday experiences have won her fans. 'She made it OK to explore our inner lives, even if we were 'ordinary',' says Saratu Abiola, a writer and policy strategist in Abuja. 'She really elevated relatability.' Power agrees. 'In many ways, Chimamanda gave me permission to be ordinary and to be comfortable, and to be strong and to be solid in my ordinariness. Even for something like natural hair that people might consider trivial,' she says. 'To be able to live in this world and know that somebody as powerful as Chimamanda is fine with travelling and doing all these great things that she does and still looks gorgeous does something for young girls and women alike.' The publishing industry was also influenced by Adichie's style, says Ainehi Edoro, founder of literary blog Brittle Paper and associate professor of English at University of Wisconsin-Madison. 'Before her, African fiction often came packaged with a kind of ethnographic weight – expected to 'explain' Africa to a western audience,' she says. 'But Adichie's work wasn't performing 'Africanness' for an outsider's gaze; it was literary, intimate, contemporary. She helped shift expectations – both in publishing and among readers – so that the next wave of African writers didn't have to over-explain, dilute or justify their stories.' After her first two novels, Adichie became well-known in literary circles but it was a Beyoncé collaboration in 2013, the same year that Americanah was released, that saw her influence grow exponentially and elevated her to rock star status. 'I'd say she transcended being a literary favourite when she teamed up with Beyoncé on Flawless and started to occupy more mainstream stages,' says Abiola, who has compared the roll out and anticipation for Dream Count to that of 'a big music artist's upcoming album'. 'Nothing we love more than seeing a fellow Nigerian in the lights.' In 2022, Adichie privately declined a national honour from the government, according to her spokesperson, but her home town conferred on her the chieftaincy title of Odeluwa – Igbo for 'the one who writes for the world'. Diehard fans began substituting their English first names with their Nigerian ones, including Power, who dropped Doris for Uzoamaka after a chat with Adichie at the end of the 2015 workshop. Young women began following her Instagram for style tips and became cheerleaders for what they called her 'rich aunty' style, while playfully leaving comments on her posts like: 'What happened to Kainene?', a reference to the Half of a Yellow Sun character who does not return home at the end of the Biafran war. Isioma Onyegikei, author of the novel Aegis, sees Adichie as a bridge between older and contemporary African literary excellence. She says people have taken to Adichie because she is visible enough for many to feel 'like they are able to touch her'. 'I read Flora Nwapa and Buchi Emecheta growing up but somehow they felt like an imagination,' says Onyegikei. 'It's different with Chimamanda,' she adds. 'I watch her videos, see her … share her pain of loss and it feels very relatable because she's succeeding, she's in her prime, using the same apps that we use and it almost feels like I can touch her and be the same person one day.' On X, young feminists banded together after Americanah came out, holding conversations on gender-based violence, traditional gender roles, natural hair and equal opportunities for women – or the lack of – in the workplace, while calling her 'my president' and 'our leader'. The debates stirred the platform so much that the term Daughters of Chimamanda emerged first as a descriptor, then as a slur, for Nigeria's feminists. Perceptions of her began to change on social media after her stance on transgender people triggered worldwide debate in 2017. Adichie has argued – and continues to do so – that the experiences of people who previously lived as men and were accorded male societal privileges before transitioning to be women, are significantly different from those of people who were born female. Another comment, in a 2021 video – 'I often say to young Nigerian feminists, please do not use feminism to justify your wickedness' – displeased some of her Nigerian fan base, partly because some said it had been weaponised on X. Nevertheless, her literary icon status holds fast and many of her readers see her as a multidimensional figure, much like a character in one of her books. 'Chimamanda is very interesting,' said Onyegikei. 'Many of the people – particularly guys – who hated her guts for her stance on feminism now stan [admire] her for her stance on transwomen. The people who stanned her then for her views on feminism can't stand her because of transwomen. All in all, love or hate her, you must respect her.'
