Chimamanda Adichie's Interview Lastnight

 
Interviewer: Were you taken aback by the success of both TEDx talks?

Chimamanda: Yes, I was taken aback by the success of both of those talks. "The things I think will do really well are not the things that do really well." I said yes to the 2013 TED invitation mainly because it was organised by my brother, Chuks, who works in information technology and development, and I wanted to help him out. "But I thought, I don't have anything to talk about. I'm not the kind of person who can manufacture things when I don't care deeply about them. But my brother said, well, there is this one thing you give us endless lectures about…" "Because it's known in my family, you don't want to demean women in my presence! And I knew this wasn't a comfortable subject, particularly for the people I was addressing, an African audience. "I was still writing it when I went up to speak, and afterwards, clearly people had listened, clearly people felt strongly about it - but I let it go. So they put it online, and only then I heard about people using it in their classes, about people arguing about it at work and school." But the approach from Beyoncé was unexpected.

Interviewer: What do you think about the Beyonce's collaboration?

Chimamanda: The one thing I will say is that I really do think Beyoncé is a force for good, as much as celebrity things go. I know there has been lot of talk in the past year about how feminism is 'cool' now, but I think if we are honest, it's not a subject that's easy. She didn't have to do this, she could have taken on, I don't know, world peace. Or nothing at all. And I realise that so many young people in our celebrity-obsessed world, well, suddenly they are thinking about this. And that's a wonderful thing. So I don't have any reservations about having said yes."

Interviewer: What makes you angry? Do you get in trouble for speaking your mind?

Chimamanda: The oppression of women, she says, "Makes me angry. I can't not be angry. I don't know how you can just be calm. My family says to me, 'Oh, you're such a man!' - you know, very lovingly… But of course I'm not, I just don't see why I shouldn't speak my mind."
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She got into trouble for speaking her mind in Nigeria: when an interviewer addressed her as Mrs Chimamanda Adichie, she corrected him, saying she wished to be known as "Ms", which the journalist reported as "Miss". Her insistence on her own family name was all over the news here last spring. She should be happy to be addressed as "Mrs", she was told, since she was, after all, married. She laughs now, but it's clear the story still disturbs her. "It was the lack of gratitude on my part for having a husband. And yet I didn't want to proclaim it: I wanted to claim my own name."

Interviewer: What do you think of race in Nigeria.

Chimamanda: "In Nigeria I'm not black," she says simply. "We don't do race in Nigeria. We do ethnicity a lot, but not race. My friends here don't really get it. Some of them sound like white Southerners from 1940. They say, 'Why are black people complaining about race? Racism doesn't exist!' It's just not a part of their existence."

Interviewer: Her thoughts on "Half of a yellow Sun", the movie and Lupita purchasing film rights to Americanah.

Chimamanda: And with the film of Half of a Yellow Sun - I remember Thandie Newton saying to me that it was important to her because you don't usually get to see black love on the screen this way." I had almost no involvement with the film "because my book means so much to me", but she was pleased with it, despite the fact that it was a small production. "It was very indie; they shot it in 12 days or something. I sometimes imagine what it would have been if it had been a grand production. But I do think it's a film that was lovingly done."
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As, doubtless, Americanah will be: optioned by Brad Pitt's company Plan B, it is to star Lupita Nyong'o, the Mexican-Kenyan actress from 12 Years a Slave, for whom Adichie "writes with the voice of a modern Africa, where ideas of tradition and modernity interact… She is witty, frank and compassionate, and her writing feels timeless and contemporary at once." Nyong'o was an admirer of Adichie's books long before she was cast in Americanah: "For the first time I felt that someone had found the words to express sentiments, analyse situations about the rich and varied African immigrant experience, in a way I never could."