00:00There's a part in Americana where I kind of base it on a story,
00:03something that happened to me, where somebody had said to me on the phone,
00:07where are you from? And I said, Nigeria. And they said, wait, but you didn't grow up there.
00:11And I said, I did. And they said, oh, you sound so American. And I said, thank you.
00:18And I think of that moment with such shame, because why am I thanking somebody for telling me
00:25that I have somehow succeeded in not being my authentic self, you know?
00:29I think that's when I started to think, you know, I'm not going to do this anymore. And my joke is,
00:33what language are you, what tone and what accent will you use if there's a fire,
00:38and you have to warn somebody that there's a fire? Am I going to say, oh my God, there's a fire?
00:43Or am I going to say, there's a fire, there's a fire? I'm like, you know, I would do the second.
00:47And in Americana, you so deftly explore discovering what race is as someone who was
00:54born and raised in Africa. So for you arriving in the U.S., not as your character, but for you,
01:00as Chimamanda, arriving in the U.S. at 19, what was that awakening like for you?
01:04Well, first thing, I remember being disappointed when we drove out of the airport, and it just,
01:11it wasn't very shiny. I mean, I just, I needed America to be shiny, and it wasn't.
01:18And then I remember once, it was, it was probably the first week when we drove past
01:23this building, and this young man was standing by the wall, peeing. And I thought, that's not
01:29supposed to happen in America. I remember also in Brooklyn, this young man who said to me, hey,
01:35sister, he called me sister. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, you know, don't call me your sister.
01:40I'm not your sister. And when I think about it now, I realize that even then, I think I had started
01:44to internalize all of the negative stereotypes that are attached to blackness. And so I felt
01:50that the way to kind of remove myself from that was to say, I'm not black. I'm a Nigerian,
01:57I'm an Igbo woman, I'm African, which now I think about it came from a place of
02:05anxiety. You know, I think that there is a strong feeling of immigrant anxiety. You want to succeed.
02:10And sometimes you think that you have to make choices that are about succeeding and nothing
02:18else, you know. And then a few months later, when I started school in Philadelphia, I think that's
02:24when things started to really change. I started to read. And then of course, there was the one class
02:28where the professor was just surprised that I wrote the best essay. And I will never forget
02:33his expression. It was a very subtle fleeting thing, but he looked surprised. And that for me
02:39is when I realized this is what it means to be black in this country. It's constantly to have
02:44people lower their expectations of you. It's constantly to have people shrink what you're
02:49capable of doing and being. And I think at that moment, I think that's when I realized I'm not
02:56going to take this, you know. I'm not. And I think also that's when I started to say I'm black.
03:03And I like to kind of half joke and say that I want to go back to Brooklyn and find that guy
03:07who called me sister. I say, I'm so sorry. I was just an idiot.
03:12And what do you think to you makes a good writer?
03:15What do I think makes a good writer? Truth. I think, and I think truth can mean many things
03:20in different ways. But I think that idea that one, the kind of sort of what I like to call a
03:26radical honesty, I think it's so important in writing. So I think one of the things about
03:31telling stories, particularly today, when the social media and you're thinking about
03:36how you're going to be received is that tendency to censor yourself, to stifle yourself.
03:45And I think that destroys art. I think that destroys creativity. So I think truth telling,
03:50a radical honesty, a kind of artistic courage where you know that maybe some people will not
03:56like what you're doing, but it's important for you to keep to the truth of your character,
04:01your story, your vision, whatever that is. So truth, I would say truth telling.
04:08And it's a kind of thing that's very difficult to define, but you know it when you see it.
04:12Talk to me about your writing process. Does an idea kind of come to you and then
04:17just keep nagging at you until you feel the need to detangle all the knots that it's going to take
04:25to fully flush it out? Or do you start with the characters, the plot, or a theme?
04:32No, I don't think I ever start with a theme. Because in general, when I think about writing
04:36and creativity, I don't think in those terms. I think that for a creative person,
04:42I don't know that theme is a very helpful way to think about work. It isn't for me.
04:47What is a helpful way to think about it?
04:50Mood, tone, character, voice. So with my novel Half of a Yellow Sun,
05:00that whole period of Nigerian history during the Nigerian Biafran War
05:06in some ways haunted me from the time that I was... When did I start hearing about Biafra
05:12from my father? I'm going to say when I was maybe eight. And it felt almost like this kind of,
05:18almost like a sacred burden. I had to do it, but I was delaying because I wasn't sure I was ready.
05:26With Americana, my most recent novel, I didn't feel any haunting. Americana was me just wanting
05:40to write about this place that had become my second home, and this place that was full of
05:46contradictions. And most of all, I wanted to write about this new identity that had been
05:52given to me in America. In a lot of your writing, the characters are so complex,
05:57and a lot of times we fall in love with them, and then they do something awful, right? Do you feel
06:03that you can relate to some of your characters in that way? I mean, you remain an icon for so many,
06:08right? But you were so glorified. And then once you said something that people didn't like,
06:13all of a sudden it's like twisted. Has that affected the way that you write as well?
06:19That's a really good question. And I think the honest answer is no, it hasn't. And it's also
06:25because, you know, I am, you know, I'm the daughter of James and Grace Adichie. I'm the
06:30granddaughter of Regina and Agnes. I'm the great-granddaughter of Omeni. I can take it,
06:35you know, I'm not going to change myself. I'm just not. And also this idea of, I'm very moved
06:43that my work means something to people, you know, across the world. But I've never wanted to be put
06:48on a pedestal because it worries me that if you're put up so high, the only other thing you can do is
06:54fall. And so when I made the comment about trans women being trans women, and people just sort of,
07:00I was just so surprised by the, there was a kind of hostility I didn't expect, especially from
07:05people I felt who knew me, and who knew that, I mean, not to sound too precious, but who knew
07:10that my heart was in the right place. But what it taught me is that your social position,
07:17you cannot control. And really, you should not put much faith in it. You can't wake up every
07:24morning and say, I'm an icon, and I mean a lot to people, and that defines me. You can't,
07:28because you don't control that.
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