Cell One

Content warning: This section of the guide discusses violence.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (born in 1977) is an influential Nigerian author whose works have received global critical acclaim. Born to an Igbo (Nigerian ethnic group) family with five siblings, her father was a statistics professor and Adichie was raised on the University of Nigeria’s Nsukka campus. Adichie pursued her tertiary education in the United States and continues to split her time between Nigeria and America. This multicultural experience has inspired some of her most notable works, including Americanah (2013).

Adichie has noted that some of the central ideas behind her work, namely feminism and advocacy for gay rights, are less tolerated in Nigeria than they are in the United States; a 2018 New Yorker article asserts that “[w]hen she talks about feminism or gay rights in Nigeria, she knows what she’s getting into, and she does it on purpose” (MacFarquhar, Larissa. “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Comes to Terms with Global Fame.” New Yorker, 2018). Despite this political tension, Nigerian experience—particularly Igbo experience—has been the focal point of her most prominent works, especially during the earliest periods of her career. The resulting effect is a body of work that celebrates and builds upon the Igbo literary tradition while pushing the political bounds of acceptable representation.