WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.120 All right. So let's let's try and unpack this. 00:00:02.540 --> 00:00:05.400 We're looking at a figure today who feels like 00:00:05.400 --> 00:00:08.060 she inhabits, I don't know, three or four different 00:00:08.060 --> 00:00:10.800 worlds all at the same time. It's a lot to juggle. 00:00:10.939 --> 00:00:12.859 I mean, think about it. Usually you have your, 00:00:12.880 --> 00:00:15.980 you know, your high literature authors, the ones 00:00:15.980 --> 00:00:19.160 who win the serious awards, get studied in universities. 00:00:19.260 --> 00:00:21.620 They're sort of in one box. The serious reclusive 00:00:21.620 --> 00:00:24.699 writer. Yeah. Then in a totally separate universe, 00:00:24.859 --> 00:00:28.739 you have your pop culture icons. The people who 00:00:28.739 --> 00:00:31.839 get sampled by Beyonce, who sit front row at 00:00:31.839 --> 00:00:34.560 Dior shows in Paris. That's the celebrity box. 00:00:34.840 --> 00:00:36.859 Totally different skill set, different audience. 00:00:37.200 --> 00:00:39.100 And then maybe in a third corner, you've got 00:00:39.100 --> 00:00:41.899 your political firebrands, the public intellectuals 00:00:41.899 --> 00:00:44.579 who get into these really heated debates on cable 00:00:44.579 --> 00:00:46.600 news or on Twitter. Right, the activist or the 00:00:46.600 --> 00:00:48.619 provocateur. And the traditional wisdom is you 00:00:48.619 --> 00:00:51.000 pick a lane. You can't be all three. But the 00:00:51.000 --> 00:00:53.829 subject of our deep dive today. just refuses 00:00:53.829 --> 00:00:56.229 to pick a lane. We are going into the life and 00:00:56.229 --> 00:00:59.229 work of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. And for so 00:00:59.229 --> 00:01:01.689 many people, that name immediately brings up 00:01:01.689 --> 00:01:04.230 the TED Talks. Oh, absolutely. The danger of 00:01:04.230 --> 00:01:06.370 a single story or we should all be feminists. 00:01:06.530 --> 00:01:08.849 They're iconic. But when I started looking at 00:01:08.849 --> 00:01:11.010 the just the stack of research for this, I realized. 00:01:11.760 --> 00:01:13.760 Those talks are, I mean, they're just the tip 00:01:13.760 --> 00:01:15.420 of the iceberg. They're the entry point, for 00:01:15.420 --> 00:01:17.319 sure. A very powerful entry point. But if you 00:01:17.319 --> 00:01:21.060 stop there, you miss the actual substance, the 00:01:21.060 --> 00:01:24.120 complexity of her work. Adichie is what some 00:01:24.120 --> 00:01:26.859 media scholars might call a transmedia phenomenon. 00:01:27.379 --> 00:01:29.060 Transmedia phenomenon, I like that. Yeah, she's 00:01:29.060 --> 00:01:30.920 a novelist, first and foremost. You can't forget 00:01:30.920 --> 00:01:34.489 that. But her influence just... It bleeds into 00:01:34.489 --> 00:01:37.730 everything, into fashion, into gender politics, 00:01:38.109 --> 00:01:41.230 post -colonial theory, even into the way we talk 00:01:41.230 --> 00:01:43.370 about cancel culture. And we have to address 00:01:43.370 --> 00:01:44.969 the elephant in the room right at the start. 00:01:45.030 --> 00:01:47.909 We're recording this in February of 2026. And 00:01:47.909 --> 00:01:50.209 this is a very specific and a very, very heavy 00:01:50.209 --> 00:01:52.150 moment in her timeline. It is. It's impossible 00:01:52.150 --> 00:01:54.750 to ignore. She released a new novel, Dream Count, 00:01:54.930 --> 00:01:57.829 just last year in 2025, which we will definitely 00:01:57.829 --> 00:02:00.569 get to. But right now the headlines are, well, 00:02:00.670 --> 00:02:03.079 they're just devastating. It's a tragedy that, 00:02:03.079 --> 00:02:05.500 I mean, no parent should ever have to even imagine, 00:02:05.680 --> 00:02:09.759 let alone endure. In January 2026, just last 00:02:09.759 --> 00:02:12.539 month, She lost her son, her young son, her very 00:02:12.539 --> 00:02:14.919 young son. It's a developing situation and it 00:02:14.919 --> 00:02:17.520 involves these really serious allegations of 00:02:17.520 --> 00:02:20.379 medical negligence in a hospital in Lagos. And 00:02:20.379 --> 00:02:23.080 it has completely shaken not just her family, 00:02:23.099 --> 00:02:25.979 but the entire nation of Nigeria and honestly, 00:02:26.139 --> 00:02:29.139 the literary world at large. So as we go through 00:02:29.139 --> 00:02:32.550 her career today, her incredible rise. We just 00:02:32.550 --> 00:02:34.830 have to hold that context in our minds. We are 00:02:34.830 --> 00:02:38.150 analyzing the life of a woman who is right now, 00:02:38.150 --> 00:02:40.870 as we speak, navigating the absolute darkest 00:02:40.870 --> 00:02:43.110 valley of her personal life. It casts a very 00:02:43.110 --> 00:02:45.409 long shadow over everything. It adds such a layer 00:02:45.409 --> 00:02:47.669 of poignancy to everything we're going to discuss. 00:02:47.930 --> 00:02:51.030 So our mission today is to trace that arc. How 00:02:51.030 --> 00:02:52.789 does a young girl growing up in a university 00:02:52.789 --> 00:02:55.430 town in Nigeria, a girl who read British storybooks, 00:02:55.590 --> 00:02:58.710 become what people call Africa's preeminent storyteller? 00:02:58.849 --> 00:03:00.580 It's quite a journey. We need to look at the 00:03:00.580 --> 00:03:03.500 books. I mean, really look at them, not just 00:03:03.500 --> 00:03:05.460 the blurbs on the back. And we have to look at 00:03:05.460 --> 00:03:08.259 the controversies. Because, and this is a key 00:03:08.259 --> 00:03:11.599 point, she has never... ever shied away from 00:03:11.599 --> 00:03:13.979 a fight. She really hasn't. And I think the best 00:03:13.979 --> 00:03:16.479 place to start is with that very idea of the 00:03:16.479 --> 00:03:20.340 storyteller, because her own origin story, it's 00:03:20.340 --> 00:03:22.060 almost too perfect. If you put it in a novel, 00:03:22.120 --> 00:03:23.819 an editor might send it back and say it's a little 00:03:23.819 --> 00:03:26.280 too on the nose. I was reading about her childhood 00:03:26.280 --> 00:03:28.500 housing situation, and you are absolutely right. 00:03:28.560 --> 00:03:30.719 You really can't make this up. So she was born 00:03:30.719 --> 00:03:33.819 in Enugu in 1977, but she grew up in Nasuka. 00:03:33.939 --> 00:03:36.560 Right, in a university town. And the specific 00:03:36.560 --> 00:03:38.860 house she lived in. Tell me about the previous 00:03:38.860 --> 00:03:41.860 tenant of that house. It is the ultimate literary 00:03:41.860 --> 00:03:44.800 coincidence, or maybe destiny, depending on how 00:03:44.800 --> 00:03:47.360 you look at it. Her father, James Adichie, was 00:03:47.360 --> 00:03:49.259 a professor of statistics at the University of 00:03:49.259 --> 00:03:52.599 Nigeria. Her mother, Grace, was the first female 00:03:52.599 --> 00:03:55.020 registrar there. An academic family through and 00:03:55.020 --> 00:03:56.560 through. Absolutely. So they lived in university 00:03:56.560 --> 00:03:59.139 housing. And the house they were assigned had 00:03:59.139 --> 00:04:02.099 just before them been occupied by Chinua Achebe. 00:04:02.219 --> 00:04:05.349 Wait, hold on. The Chinua Achebe. The man who 00:04:05.349 --> 00:04:08.750 wrote Things Fall Apart. The very same. The grandfather 00:04:08.750 --> 00:04:12.009 of modern African literature. The man who essentially 00:04:12.009 --> 00:04:14.229 proved to the entire Western world that African 00:04:14.229 --> 00:04:17.149 literature was a serious, profound art form. 00:04:17.550 --> 00:04:19.750 So Adichie grew up, you know, running through 00:04:19.750 --> 00:04:21.790 the same hallways, living in the same rooms where 00:04:21.790 --> 00:04:23.490 he might have drafted some of his most important 00:04:23.490 --> 00:04:26.589 work. That feels like Destiny. Like you just 00:04:26.589 --> 00:04:28.329 breathe in the air in that house and you have 00:04:28.329 --> 00:04:30.870 to become a writer. It's just in the walls. Mm 00:04:30.870 --> 00:04:34.120 -hmm. Was she writing these incredible stories 00:04:34.120 --> 00:04:37.860 about Igbo villages and yams from age five? See, 00:04:37.920 --> 00:04:39.519 that's where you'd think the story goes. It's 00:04:39.519 --> 00:04:41.699 the logical next step. But it's actually the 00:04:41.699 --> 00:04:43.699 opposite. And this is so crucial to understanding 00:04:43.699 --> 00:04:45.980 her entire worldview, especially that single 00:04:45.980 --> 00:04:49.160 story idea. She was a voracious reader as a child, 00:04:49.220 --> 00:04:51.259 just devoured books. But the books that were 00:04:51.259 --> 00:04:53.740 available to her were almost exclusively British 00:04:53.740 --> 00:04:56.600 children's books. Enid Blyton. Oh, like the famous 00:04:56.600 --> 00:04:59.759 five. The Secret Seven, all that stuff. Exactly. 00:04:59.879 --> 00:05:03.000 Very, very British. Very white. Very middle class, 00:05:03.120 --> 00:05:06.810 mid -century stuff. So when Adichie started writing 00:05:06.810 --> 00:05:09.350 her own little stories around age seven or so, 00:05:09.449 --> 00:05:12.329 she wasn't writing about Nasuka. She wasn't writing 00:05:12.329 --> 00:05:14.689 about the heat or eating mangoes off the tree. 00:05:14.829 --> 00:05:16.649 What was she writing about? She was writing about 00:05:16.649 --> 00:05:19.149 characters who were white, characters who had 00:05:19.149 --> 00:05:21.829 blue eyes, who played in the snow and who ate 00:05:21.829 --> 00:05:24.550 apples all the time. Wait, had she ever eaten 00:05:24.550 --> 00:05:28.069 an apple at that point or seen snow? No. She 00:05:28.069 --> 00:05:30.310 lived in Nigeria. She had never seen snow in 00:05:30.310 --> 00:05:32.430 her life. She said in her TED Talk she didn't 00:05:32.430 --> 00:05:34.370 know what ginger beer tasted like, but her characters 00:05:34.370 --> 00:05:36.149 were constantly drinking it because that's what 00:05:36.149 --> 00:05:39.050 the characters in her books did. Wow. That's 00:05:39.050 --> 00:05:42.050 wild. It's like she didn't realize her own reality 00:05:42.050 --> 00:05:45.889 was allowable in the world of fiction. That is 00:05:45.889 --> 00:05:48.589 the psychological erasure of colonialism in a 00:05:48.589 --> 00:05:51.069 nutshell. It's so powerful. It wasn't that she 00:05:51.069 --> 00:05:53.089 didn't like her life or her world. It's that 00:05:53.089 --> 00:05:56.019 she had... unconsciously internalized this idea 00:05:56.019 --> 00:05:58.839 that books are foreign things. Books are places 00:05:58.839 --> 00:06:01.199 where foreign people do foreign things. The people 00:06:01.199 --> 00:06:03.360 who looked like her, who ate the food she ate. 00:06:03.519 --> 00:06:05.939 People with skin the color of chocolate, as she 00:06:05.939 --> 00:06:08.639 says. People whose kinky hair couldn't form a 00:06:08.639 --> 00:06:11.259 ponytail. She just didn't think they could exist 00:06:11.259 --> 00:06:13.600 inside the pages of a novel. That's actually 00:06:13.600 --> 00:06:15.459 kind of heartbreaking when you think about it. 00:06:15.480 --> 00:06:17.180 You're basically erasing yourself from your own 00:06:17.180 --> 00:06:20.500 imagination before you even get started. What 00:06:20.500 --> 00:06:22.319 broke the spell? When did she have that light 00:06:22.319 --> 00:06:24.500 bulb moment of, oh, wait, I could be in a book? 00:06:24.660 --> 00:06:27.180 It was when she was about 10 years old. She finally 00:06:27.180 --> 00:06:30.639 stumbled upon African writers. She discovered 00:06:30.639 --> 00:06:33.819 the literature of her own continent. She read 00:06:33.819 --> 00:06:36.699 Achebe's Things Fall Apart, which is so fitting, 00:06:36.819 --> 00:06:39.860 given the house. Right. And Kamarle from Guinea, 00:06:40.060 --> 00:06:42.560 Bucci Amicheta. And she said it was a complete 00:06:42.560 --> 00:06:46.029 shock to the system. It was a mental shift. Suddenly, 00:06:46.069 --> 00:06:48.529 she was reading and seeing her own name or names 00:06:48.529 --> 00:06:50.329 like hers. She was reading about the food she 00:06:50.329 --> 00:06:52.750 ate. She realized that literature wasn't just 00:06:52.750 --> 00:06:55.550 a window into England. It could be a mirror reflecting 00:06:55.550 --> 00:06:58.129 her own world. And speaking of names, I found 00:06:58.129 --> 00:07:00.490 it fascinating that Chimamanda wasn't actually 00:07:00.490 --> 00:07:02.790 the name she used growing up. That came later. 00:07:02.970 --> 00:07:06.069 No, she was born Grace Ngozi Adichie. Grace was 00:07:06.069 --> 00:07:08.290 after her mother. So where does Chimamanda come 00:07:08.290 --> 00:07:11.610 from? It was a choice she made. It was part of 00:07:11.610 --> 00:07:14.189 her finding her own identity. which is a recurring 00:07:14.189 --> 00:07:16.910 theme in her work. During her Catholic confirmation, 00:07:17.449 --> 00:07:20.509 she was looking for a new name. And interestingly, 00:07:20.810 --> 00:07:23.829 before she settled on Shemamanda, she went through 00:07:23.829 --> 00:07:26.420 a phase where she wanted to be Amanda. Amanda. 00:07:26.579 --> 00:07:29.639 That sounds very American. Very sweet valley 00:07:29.639 --> 00:07:31.939 high. It does, doesn't it? It was very Western. 00:07:32.100 --> 00:07:34.540 She even published a poetry collection in 1997, 00:07:35.000 --> 00:07:37.620 a very early work called Decisions, under the 00:07:37.620 --> 00:07:41.459 name Amanda N. Adichie. No way. Yes. But eventually 00:07:41.459 --> 00:07:43.819 she realized that Amanda didn't really fit the 00:07:43.819 --> 00:07:45.779 writer she was becoming. It felt like a costume. 00:07:46.259 --> 00:07:49.000 So she embraced Chimamanda, which is a beautiful 00:07:49.000 --> 00:07:51.720 Igbo name. It means my God will not fall or my 00:07:51.720 --> 00:07:54.339 God will not fail. That's powerful. It was a 00:07:54.339 --> 00:07:57.699 re - A conscious one. But she didn't go straight 00:07:57.699 --> 00:07:59.899 from that realization into writing as a career, 00:08:00.000 --> 00:08:02.759 did she? Because coming from that kind of Nigerian 00:08:02.759 --> 00:08:06.000 academic family, I'm guessing novelist wasn't 00:08:06.000 --> 00:08:08.139 at the top of the approved careers list? You 00:08:08.139 --> 00:08:10.500 would be guessing right. The expectation was 00:08:10.500 --> 00:08:12.240 for something stable, something prestigious. 00:08:13.370 --> 00:08:16.750 Doctor, lawyer, engineer. The classic immigrant 00:08:16.750 --> 00:08:19.769 parent dream. Exactly. So she did what was expected. 00:08:20.089 --> 00:08:22.769 She started studying medicine and pharmacy at 00:08:22.769 --> 00:08:25.050 the University of Nigeria. She did that for about 00:08:25.050 --> 00:08:28.029 a year and a half. I just, I cannot picture her 00:08:28.029 --> 00:08:31.000 in a lab coat. titrating chemicals. Apparently, 00:08:31.000 --> 00:08:33.419 she was doing fine academically, but her heart 00:08:33.419 --> 00:08:35.179 just wasn't in it. Her passion was elsewhere. 00:08:35.440 --> 00:08:37.720 She was editing a campus magazine on the side. 00:08:37.799 --> 00:08:39.720 It was called The Compass. And that's where she 00:08:39.720 --> 00:08:42.799 was really alive. Eventually, at age 19, she 00:08:42.799 --> 00:08:45.360 made the break. A huge decision. A life -changing 00:08:45.360 --> 00:08:47.860 one. She left the medical path, left Nigeria, 00:08:48.100 --> 00:08:50.340 and moved to the United States to study communications 00:08:50.340 --> 00:08:53.700 and political science. First at Drexel in Philadelphia, 00:08:54.059 --> 00:08:56.179 and then she transferred to Eastern Connecticut 00:08:56.179 --> 00:08:58.620 State University. Wow, that must have been amazing. 00:08:58.639 --> 00:09:00.580 Massive culture shock. I mean, going from Nisuka 00:09:00.580 --> 00:09:04.080 to Connecticut. Massive. And this is really where 00:09:04.080 --> 00:09:06.539 her deep understanding of race in America began 00:09:06.539 --> 00:09:08.940 to form, which we'll see is the absolute bedrock 00:09:08.940 --> 00:09:12.379 of Americana. But academically, she just, she 00:09:12.379 --> 00:09:15.159 crushed it. She graduated summa cum laude. And 00:09:15.159 --> 00:09:18.019 she didn't stop there. Oh no, she was just collecting 00:09:18.019 --> 00:09:21.200 degrees. She then went to Johns Hopkins for a 00:09:21.200 --> 00:09:23.200 master's in creative writing, and after that 00:09:23.200 --> 00:09:26.340 to Yale for a master's in African studies. She 00:09:26.340 --> 00:09:28.960 was building this incredible intellectual foundation. 00:09:29.700 --> 00:09:32.120 But all the degrees in the world don't guarantee 00:09:32.120 --> 00:09:35.480 you a book deal. I read about the rejection letter 00:09:35.480 --> 00:09:38.879 she got for her first novel. And honestly, it 00:09:38.879 --> 00:09:42.480 made my blood boil. It's the classic infuriating 00:09:42.480 --> 00:09:44.980 gatekeeping of the publishing industry. This 00:09:44.980 --> 00:09:46.519 is when she was shopping around the manuscript 00:09:46.519 --> 00:09:50.000 for what would become Purple Hibiscus. And agents, 00:09:50.179 --> 00:09:51.700 you know, they told her the writing was beautiful. 00:09:51.740 --> 00:09:53.840 The prose was stunning. But there's always a 00:09:53.840 --> 00:09:56.120 but. The but was the setting. They said, this 00:09:56.120 --> 00:09:58.629 is great, but could you? Could you change it? 00:09:58.649 --> 00:10:01.309 Could you make it America or maybe make the African 00:10:01.309 --> 00:10:03.809 characters more familiar? Make them more familiar. 00:10:03.870 --> 00:10:05.309 What does that even mean? It sounds like a coded 00:10:05.309 --> 00:10:07.289 way of saying make them fit our stereotypes. 00:10:07.629 --> 00:10:10.570 That's exactly what it means. It means make them 00:10:10.570 --> 00:10:13.370 fit the single story. They didn't want a story 00:10:13.370 --> 00:10:15.809 about a complex, middle class, psychologically 00:10:15.809 --> 00:10:18.970 nuanced Nigerian family dealing with religious 00:10:18.970 --> 00:10:21.590 fanaticism. They wanted the Africa they already 00:10:21.590 --> 00:10:26.090 knew from the news. Poverty, war, AIDS. Maybe 00:10:26.090 --> 00:10:28.830 a safari with a lion. That's the stuff that sold. 00:10:29.049 --> 00:10:30.929 They basically told her that no one in the West 00:10:30.929 --> 00:10:33.370 would buy a book about regular, complicated life 00:10:33.370 --> 00:10:35.590 in Nigeria. My God, she didn't listen to them. 00:10:35.649 --> 00:10:37.710 She refused to compromise. And that's a pattern 00:10:37.710 --> 00:10:40.269 with her. She eventually found an agent, Jonna 00:10:40.269 --> 00:10:42.190 Pearson Morris, who believed in the book as it 00:10:42.190 --> 00:10:45.210 was. And Algonquin Books published Purple Hibiscus 00:10:45.210 --> 00:10:47.929 in 2003. And that brings us to the first of what 00:10:47.929 --> 00:10:50.610 I think of as her big three novels. The foundational 00:10:50.610 --> 00:10:53.490 trilogy, in a way. Let's dive into these because 00:10:53.490 --> 00:10:55.549 I feel like people know the titles, but I really 00:10:55.549 --> 00:10:58.269 want to get into what makes them tick. So Purple 00:10:58.269 --> 00:11:00.669 Hibiscus, it's her debut. It's a coming of age 00:11:00.669 --> 00:11:03.289 story, right? It is, but it's a very dark and 00:11:03.289 --> 00:11:06.210 claustrophobic one. It's narrated by a 15 -year 00:11:06.210 --> 00:11:08.750 -old girl named Kambili. And on the surface, 00:11:08.950 --> 00:11:12.730 her life looks perfect. Her father, Eugene, is 00:11:12.730 --> 00:11:15.330 a wealthy factory owner. He's a devout Catholic, 00:11:15.450 --> 00:11:17.669 a pillar of the community who wins human rights 00:11:17.669 --> 00:11:20.549 awards for his newspaper. He's a big man. A respected 00:11:20.549 --> 00:11:23.470 figure. But behind closed doors. Behind closed 00:11:23.470 --> 00:11:26.679 doors, he is an absolute tyrant. He's violently 00:11:26.679 --> 00:11:29.320 abusive to his wife and his two children. It's 00:11:29.320 --> 00:11:31.799 this terrifying blend of religious piety and 00:11:31.799 --> 00:11:34.960 domestic terror. If they sin, if they fail to 00:11:34.960 --> 00:11:37.700 come first in their class, he punishes them physically 00:11:37.700 --> 00:11:40.200 in the most horrific ways. So the whole book 00:11:40.200 --> 00:11:43.830 is just. It's suffocatingly tense. Kambili, the 00:11:43.830 --> 00:11:45.990 narrator, barely speaks above a whisper for the 00:11:45.990 --> 00:11:47.909 first half of the book because she is so conditioned 00:11:47.909 --> 00:11:50.509 by fear. She's terrified of stepping out of line. 00:11:50.690 --> 00:11:52.230 It's interesting you mentioned the father's a 00:11:52.230 --> 00:11:54.269 big man in the community, so he's not just a 00:11:54.269 --> 00:11:57.440 one -dimensional cartoon villain. That's the 00:11:57.440 --> 00:12:00.740 nuance Adichie brings, even in her debut. He 00:12:00.740 --> 00:12:03.620 is a villain, 100%. But he is also presented 00:12:03.620 --> 00:12:06.360 as a product, a victim even, of colonialism. 00:12:06.919 --> 00:12:09.559 He has internalized the British colonial religion 00:12:09.559 --> 00:12:13.120 so deeply that he rejects his own Igbo culture 00:12:13.120 --> 00:12:16.399 completely. How does it manifest? Well, he speaks 00:12:16.399 --> 00:12:19.320 English at home, not Igbo. He refers to his own 00:12:19.320 --> 00:12:22.419 father as a pagan and refuses to let his children 00:12:22.419 --> 00:12:25.360 visit him. He believes, with every fiber of his 00:12:25.360 --> 00:12:28.320 being, that to be good is to be English and Catholic 00:12:28.320 --> 00:12:31.360 and anything traditional, anything African, is 00:12:31.360 --> 00:12:34.899 evil. His violence comes from this twisted, fanatical 00:12:34.899 --> 00:12:37.440 desire to save his family from their own heritage. 00:12:37.740 --> 00:12:40.000 That is so heavy. But there's a crack of light, 00:12:40.080 --> 00:12:41.500 right? Yeah, yeah. Kambili and her brother get 00:12:41.500 --> 00:12:43.259 an escape. They go to visit their aunt. They 00:12:43.259 --> 00:12:44.960 do. They go to stay with their aunt, Ifeoma. 00:12:45.100 --> 00:12:47.820 And Ifeoma is the absolute heart and soul of 00:12:47.820 --> 00:12:49.480 that book. She's the counterpoint to Eugene in 00:12:49.480 --> 00:12:51.500 every way. She's a university lecturer. She's 00:12:51.500 --> 00:12:54.120 widowed. She's poor. She's constantly struggling 00:12:54.120 --> 00:12:56.759 to buy gas for her beat -up car. But her tiny 00:12:56.759 --> 00:12:59.000 apartment is full of laughter and debate and 00:12:59.000 --> 00:13:02.210 loud music. It's freedom. It is total freedom. 00:13:02.549 --> 00:13:05.289 And this is where that term womanism comes in, 00:13:05.429 --> 00:13:08.169 which is often used to describe her work. How 00:13:08.169 --> 00:13:10.169 is that different from feminism in this context? 00:13:10.509 --> 00:13:13.909 Well, womanism, particularly in an African context, 00:13:14.190 --> 00:13:16.629 is often seen as being more community and family 00:13:16.629 --> 00:13:19.549 oriented. Auntie Efema isn't fighting against 00:13:19.549 --> 00:13:22.509 men in the abstract. She's fighting for the survival 00:13:22.509 --> 00:13:25.350 and dignity of her family unit. She runs a democratic 00:13:25.350 --> 00:13:27.549 household where her children are encouraged to 00:13:27.549 --> 00:13:29.950 argue with her. She teaches Kambili that you 00:13:29.950 --> 00:13:31.740 can question authority that you're allowed to 00:13:31.740 --> 00:13:34.519 have a voice. So it's this incredible contrast. 00:13:34.820 --> 00:13:36.960 Kambidi's father has all the money and power, 00:13:37.120 --> 00:13:40.659 but his house is a silent prison. Auntie Ifeoma 00:13:40.659 --> 00:13:43.379 has no money, but her house is overflowing with 00:13:43.379 --> 00:13:45.299 joy and life. Precisely. And that's where the 00:13:45.299 --> 00:13:47.000 title comes from. The Purple Hibiscus itself. 00:13:47.240 --> 00:13:49.580 It's an experimental flower, right? Not a common 00:13:49.580 --> 00:13:53.059 one. Exactly. It's a rare, special hybrid that 00:13:53.059 --> 00:13:55.600 Auntie Efeoma's botanist friend created. It's 00:13:55.600 --> 00:13:58.340 not supposed to exist, but it does. It's beautiful 00:13:58.340 --> 00:14:00.720 and defiant, and it can grow even in difficult 00:14:00.720 --> 00:14:04.279 soil. And that's the perfect metaphor for Kambili 00:14:04.279 --> 00:14:06.879 finding her own voice, her own unique identity. 00:14:07.379 --> 00:14:09.899 So the book ends on a note of hope, then. Cautious 00:14:09.899 --> 00:14:13.029 hope. It's not a fairy tale ending. But there's 00:14:13.029 --> 00:14:15.549 the possibility of a new life, symbolized by 00:14:15.549 --> 00:14:18.230 this idea of the arrival of a king, which refers 00:14:18.230 --> 00:14:21.090 to Palm Sunday, and the new rains that wash things 00:14:21.090 --> 00:14:23.950 clean. So Purple Hibiscus puts her on the literary 00:14:23.950 --> 00:14:26.750 map. It gets nominated for major prizes. Critics 00:14:26.750 --> 00:14:31.529 loved it. But then came 2006, and she drops half 00:14:31.529 --> 00:14:35.809 of a yellow sun. And this, this was the blockbuster. 00:14:35.909 --> 00:14:38.330 This changed the game. This was the book that 00:14:38.330 --> 00:14:40.590 proved she wasn't a one -hit wonder. This was 00:14:40.590 --> 00:14:43.149 her epic. It's a massive, sweeping historical 00:14:43.149 --> 00:14:45.929 novel set during the Biafran War. That was the 00:14:45.929 --> 00:14:49.090 Nigerian Civil War, late 1960s. Right. And for 00:14:49.090 --> 00:14:50.509 listeners who might not be familiar with the 00:14:50.509 --> 00:14:54.129 history, it's essential context. In 1967, the 00:14:54.129 --> 00:14:56.509 Igbo people of southeastern Nigeria, following 00:14:56.509 --> 00:14:58.490 a series of massacres against them in other parts 00:14:58.490 --> 00:15:01.090 of the country, seceded to form their own independent 00:15:01.090 --> 00:15:04.009 nation, the Republic of Biafra. And the Nigerian 00:15:04.009 --> 00:15:06.490 government did not accept that? Not at all. They 00:15:06.490 --> 00:15:08.690 fought to take the territory back. It turned 00:15:08.690 --> 00:15:11.850 into a brutal three -year war, largely defined 00:15:11.850 --> 00:15:14.529 by the Nigerian government's blockade of Biafra, 00:15:14.629 --> 00:15:17.909 which led to mass starvation. Hundreds of thousands, 00:15:18.090 --> 00:15:20.809 maybe over a million civilians, died from hunger. 00:15:21.149 --> 00:15:23.169 Adichie wasn't born yet when this happened, right? 00:15:23.309 --> 00:15:25.429 No, she was born seven years after the war ended. 00:15:25.690 --> 00:15:28.789 But the war is the defining trauma of her people, 00:15:28.909 --> 00:15:31.950 the Igbo people. It's in the soil. She lost both 00:15:31.950 --> 00:15:34.340 of her grandfathers in that war. She grew up 00:15:34.340 --> 00:15:36.419 hearing the stories, living in the shadow of 00:15:36.419 --> 00:15:39.419 it. Writing this book was her way of excavating 00:15:39.419 --> 00:15:42.220 her parents' trauma, of bearing witness. The 00:15:42.220 --> 00:15:44.000 thing that struck me so forcefully about this 00:15:44.000 --> 00:15:45.899 book, and I think is her superpower as a writer, 00:15:46.019 --> 00:15:48.419 is the sensory detail. It doesn't read like a 00:15:48.419 --> 00:15:51.340 dry history lesson at all. It reads like you 00:15:51.340 --> 00:15:54.399 can smell it. You can taste the food or the lack 00:15:54.399 --> 00:15:57.159 of it. That is Adichie's genius. She grounds 00:15:57.159 --> 00:15:59.539 the horror of history in the mundane, in the 00:15:59.539 --> 00:16:02.120 details of daily life. In the first part of the 00:16:02.120 --> 00:16:04.440 book, Before the War, you're introduced to these 00:16:04.440 --> 00:16:06.500 characters, Oda Nikbo, the radical university 00:16:06.500 --> 00:16:09.480 professor, and Alana, his glamorous lover. And 00:16:09.480 --> 00:16:11.679 their life is good. Their life is fantastic. 00:16:11.980 --> 00:16:14.659 They're part of this new post -independence intellectual 00:16:14.659 --> 00:16:17.899 elite. And Adichie gives you these incredible 00:16:17.899 --> 00:16:20.500 details, like a description of their fridge being 00:16:20.500 --> 00:16:24.379 full of cold beer and oranges and... roasted 00:16:24.379 --> 00:16:27.600 shimmering chicken they sit around debating politics 00:16:27.600 --> 00:16:30.860 over glasses of brandy it's a life of abundance 00:16:30.860 --> 00:16:34.460 and ideas and then the war starts and the shimmering 00:16:34.460 --> 00:16:37.600 chicken disappears slowly and then all at once 00:16:37.600 --> 00:16:40.600 the fridge empties out the brandy is gone the 00:16:40.600 --> 00:16:43.559 shimmering chicken is replaced by Well, nothing. 00:16:43.720 --> 00:16:45.779 And then eventually they're eating lizards to 00:16:45.779 --> 00:16:47.919 survive. They're eating powdered egg yolks that 00:16:47.919 --> 00:16:50.639 come from humanitarian aid drops. She shows you 00:16:50.639 --> 00:16:52.519 the degradation of war, not just through battles 00:16:52.519 --> 00:16:55.080 and bombs, but through the quiet horror of your 00:16:55.080 --> 00:16:57.120 hair starting to fall out from malnutrition, 00:16:57.120 --> 00:16:59.720 of your ribs starting to show through your skin. 00:16:59.919 --> 00:17:01.580 There's a character in the book, the houseboy, 00:17:01.679 --> 00:17:04.349 Ugu. He's probably my favorite character. He's 00:17:04.349 --> 00:17:06.390 this young boy from a poor village who comes 00:17:06.390 --> 00:17:08.910 to work for Odenigbo. And he's the moral center 00:17:08.910 --> 00:17:11.549 of the book in many ways. His journey is incredible. 00:17:11.890 --> 00:17:15.730 And there's a scene, a small moment, where Odenigbo 00:17:15.730 --> 00:17:18.049 is teaching him about history that I feel is 00:17:18.049 --> 00:17:21.329 crucial to understanding Adichie's entire philosophy. 00:17:21.589 --> 00:17:24.589 The Mungo Park lesson. Yes. It's so important. 00:17:24.910 --> 00:17:27.809 Tell us about it. Odenigbo sees Ugu reading a 00:17:27.809 --> 00:17:30.769 colonial textbook, and he asks him what he's 00:17:30.769 --> 00:17:33.599 learning. Ugu tells him that the book says the 00:17:33.599 --> 00:17:36.220 Scottish explorer Mungo Park discovered the Niger 00:17:36.220 --> 00:17:40.200 River. And Odenigbo just scoffs. He asks Ugu, 00:17:40.380 --> 00:17:43.200 how can a white man discover a river that our 00:17:43.200 --> 00:17:45.900 people have been fishing in for centuries? It's 00:17:45.900 --> 00:17:48.000 just absurd when you say it out loud like that. 00:17:48.039 --> 00:17:50.119 Like all the people fishing didn't know where 00:17:50.119 --> 00:17:51.940 they were until a white guy showed up with a 00:17:51.940 --> 00:17:55.230 map and a flag. Precisely. It exposes the arrogance 00:17:55.230 --> 00:17:57.769 of the colonial narrative. But then Odenigbo 00:17:57.769 --> 00:18:00.089 tells Ugu something very pragmatic, and this 00:18:00.089 --> 00:18:02.309 is the key part. He says, of course that's rubbish, 00:18:02.569 --> 00:18:04.789 but you must write it on your exam so you can 00:18:04.789 --> 00:18:07.990 pass. Wow. It perfectly captures the double consciousness 00:18:07.990 --> 00:18:10.450 of the colonized subject. You have to know the 00:18:10.450 --> 00:18:12.230 truth, that your history is valid, that your 00:18:12.230 --> 00:18:14.549 people were there first. But you also have to 00:18:14.549 --> 00:18:16.549 learn to parrot the colonizers' lies just to 00:18:16.549 --> 00:18:19.099 survive and succeed within their system. That 00:18:19.099 --> 00:18:21.000 book won everything, didn't it? The Orange Prize. 00:18:21.400 --> 00:18:23.980 And then years later, it was named the winner 00:18:23.980 --> 00:18:26.619 of winners from 25 years of that prize. It was 00:18:26.619 --> 00:18:28.940 made into a movie with Thandie Mee Newton and 00:18:28.940 --> 00:18:31.380 Chiwetel Ejiofor. It just felt like the African 00:18:31.380 --> 00:18:34.119 novel of the decade. It absolutely was. It took 00:18:34.119 --> 00:18:36.619 a very specific, very painful local history and 00:18:36.619 --> 00:18:39.779 made it universal. But then, true to form, she 00:18:39.779 --> 00:18:43.440 pivoted again. In 2013, she released Americana. 00:18:43.960 --> 00:18:46.079 And this felt completely different. Yeah, this 00:18:46.079 --> 00:18:47.880 wasn't historical fiction. This was bitingly 00:18:47.880 --> 00:18:51.140 contemporary. It was sharp. It was funny. And 00:18:51.140 --> 00:18:54.279 it was about something incredibly messy, race 00:18:54.279 --> 00:18:56.920 in America. And race in Nigeria and the space 00:18:56.920 --> 00:18:59.279 between the two. This is the book that introduces 00:18:59.279 --> 00:19:01.339 that concept of the global black experience. 00:19:01.599 --> 00:19:04.519 The main character, Ifemelu, she moves from Nigeria 00:19:04.519 --> 00:19:07.079 to the U .S. for university. And she has this 00:19:07.079 --> 00:19:09.259 profound realization. She says she didn't know 00:19:09.259 --> 00:19:11.920 she was black. until she came to America. That 00:19:11.920 --> 00:19:14.119 is the core thesis of the novel. In Nigeria, 00:19:14.299 --> 00:19:16.700 Ifemelu isn't black. Nobody is black because 00:19:16.700 --> 00:19:19.200 everybody is black. It's not an identity marker. 00:19:19.460 --> 00:19:21.880 She is Igbo. She's a woman. She's middle class. 00:19:22.180 --> 00:19:24.980 Her identity is defined by ethnicity, by class, 00:19:25.019 --> 00:19:27.539 by region. But then she lands at JFK Airport. 00:19:27.900 --> 00:19:30.420 And suddenly she is assigned this monolithic 00:19:30.420 --> 00:19:34.470 label, black. And with that label, she inherits 00:19:34.470 --> 00:19:36.569 all the historical baggage of American slavery 00:19:36.569 --> 00:19:39.430 and Jim Crow and the civil rights struggle, a 00:19:39.430 --> 00:19:42.210 history that she personally has no direct connection 00:19:42.210 --> 00:19:44.849 to. She has to learn how to be black in America. 00:19:45.009 --> 00:19:46.890 She starts a blog in the book to process all 00:19:46.890 --> 00:19:49.130 of this, right? The title is amazing. It's brilliant. 00:19:49.829 --> 00:19:53.609 Race teens or various observations about American 00:19:53.609 --> 00:19:56.490 blacks, those formerly known as Negroes by a 00:19:56.490 --> 00:19:59.230 non -American black. That blog was such a clever 00:19:59.230 --> 00:20:02.170 literary device. It allowed Adichie to basically 00:20:02.170 --> 00:20:04.589 break the fourth wall and just drop these sharp, 00:20:04.630 --> 00:20:06.630 insightful essays right into the middle of the 00:20:06.630 --> 00:20:08.910 novel. It did. She uses it to critique everything. 00:20:09.069 --> 00:20:11.190 She critiques the oppression Olympics where different 00:20:11.190 --> 00:20:13.430 minority groups argue over who has it worse. 00:20:13.630 --> 00:20:16.069 She critiques the way well -meaning white liberals 00:20:16.069 --> 00:20:19.049 tiptoe around race with this awkward, pained 00:20:19.049 --> 00:20:21.210 politeness. And we have to talk about the hair. 00:20:21.390 --> 00:20:23.829 My God, there is so much about hair in this book. 00:20:23.950 --> 00:20:26.710 Hair is central. It's a whole political battlefield. 00:20:27.240 --> 00:20:29.200 There's a heartbreaking scene early on where 00:20:29.200 --> 00:20:31.619 a Femalu is trying to get a corporate job, and 00:20:31.619 --> 00:20:33.559 she's told by an African -American woman that 00:20:33.559 --> 00:20:36.259 she needs to relax her hair, to chemically straighten 00:20:36.259 --> 00:20:38.940 it, to look professional. A process which involves 00:20:38.940 --> 00:20:41.819 putting caustic chemicals on your head that literally 00:20:41.819 --> 00:20:44.380 burn your scalp. It physically hurts. It's painful. 00:20:44.680 --> 00:20:48.619 But the societal message is crystal clear. Your 00:20:48.619 --> 00:20:51.259 natural self is unprofessional. Your natural 00:20:51.259 --> 00:20:55.779 self is messy, unruly. To be successful, to assimilate. 00:20:56.170 --> 00:20:59.150 You must mimic whiteness. And the scene where 00:20:59.150 --> 00:21:01.250 she finally cuts off all the relaxed hair and 00:21:01.250 --> 00:21:03.529 goes natural is this huge moment of liberation. 00:21:03.910 --> 00:21:06.549 It is a massive moment of claiming agency. It's 00:21:06.549 --> 00:21:08.410 not just about a hairstyle. It's about refusing 00:21:08.410 --> 00:21:10.849 to apologize for your own genetics. It's a political 00:21:10.849 --> 00:21:13.430 act. Americana felt like it captured the Obama 00:21:13.430 --> 00:21:16.630 era perfectly. That weird mix of hope and progress, 00:21:16.849 --> 00:21:19.549 but also the dawning realization that actually, 00:21:19.670 --> 00:21:21.750 no, we are not a post -racial society at all. 00:21:21.789 --> 00:21:24.450 It was a monster hit. It was. It won the National 00:21:24.450 --> 00:21:26.950 Book Critics Circle Award. It was on every best 00:21:26.950 --> 00:21:29.789 of the year list. But here's the thing. While 00:21:29.789 --> 00:21:32.730 she was writing these dense, brilliant, prize 00:21:32.730 --> 00:21:35.190 -winning novels, she was also simultaneously 00:21:35.190 --> 00:21:38.509 blowing up on a totally different platform. The 00:21:38.509 --> 00:21:40.890 TED stage. This is where the transmedia aspect 00:21:40.890 --> 00:21:44.470 really kicks into high gear. In 2009, she gave 00:21:44.470 --> 00:21:47.450 the talk, The Danger of a Single Story. Which 00:21:47.450 --> 00:21:49.730 I think is now required viewing for basically 00:21:49.730 --> 00:21:51.509 every high school student in the English -speaking 00:21:51.509 --> 00:21:55.019 world. It has over 27 million views on the TED 00:21:55.019 --> 00:21:57.579 website alone. It's one of the most viewed talks 00:21:57.579 --> 00:22:00.279 of all time. And it's so effective because the 00:22:00.279 --> 00:22:03.559 concept is so simple, so powerful. If you only 00:22:03.559 --> 00:22:05.859 ever hear one story about a people, that they 00:22:05.859 --> 00:22:07.839 are poor or that they are criminals or that they 00:22:07.839 --> 00:22:10.200 are terrorists, that becomes the only reality 00:22:10.200 --> 00:22:12.299 in your mind. It robs people of their complexity, 00:22:12.480 --> 00:22:14.619 their humanity. But then came the 2012 talk. 00:22:14.960 --> 00:22:16.960 We should all be feminists. And that talk changed 00:22:16.960 --> 00:22:19.140 everything. Because a year later, in December 00:22:19.140 --> 00:22:22.619 2013, Beyonce dropped her surprise self -titled 00:22:22.619 --> 00:22:25.019 visual album. And right in the middle of the 00:22:25.019 --> 00:22:28.779 song, Flawless, suddenly there is Chimamanda's 00:22:28.779 --> 00:22:32.220 voice, clear as a bell. We teach girls to shrink 00:22:32.220 --> 00:22:34.619 themselves, to make themselves smaller. It was 00:22:34.619 --> 00:22:37.200 a cultural earthquake. You had the biggest pop 00:22:37.200 --> 00:22:39.940 star on the planet sampling a Nigerian novelist 00:22:39.940 --> 00:22:42.650 talking about feminist theory. But it wasn't 00:22:42.650 --> 00:22:44.670 without its controversy. You had some academic 00:22:44.670 --> 00:22:47.750 purists who said Beyonce wasn't a real feminist 00:22:47.750 --> 00:22:49.589 because, you know, she performs for the male 00:22:49.589 --> 00:22:52.950 gaze. She dances in revealing outfits. Did Adichie 00:22:52.950 --> 00:22:55.150 care about any of that? Not in the slightest. 00:22:55.390 --> 00:22:58.490 She defended Beyonce completely. She famously 00:22:58.490 --> 00:23:00.970 said in an interview, whoever says they're feminist 00:23:00.970 --> 00:23:04.000 is bloody feminist. She understood that Beyonce 00:23:04.000 --> 00:23:06.579 could reach millions and millions of young girls 00:23:06.579 --> 00:23:09.619 that a literary novel never, ever would. She 00:23:09.619 --> 00:23:12.259 refused to be a gatekeeper for feminism. And 00:23:12.259 --> 00:23:14.119 she also took that message into the world of 00:23:14.119 --> 00:23:17.359 high fashion, which, again, feels like a contradiction 00:23:17.359 --> 00:23:19.779 to some people. You know, the stereotype of the 00:23:19.779 --> 00:23:21.720 serious female intellectual is that she's supposed 00:23:21.720 --> 00:23:24.119 to be frumpy. Right. Above it all. Like if you 00:23:24.119 --> 00:23:25.799 care about lipstick and a nice dress, you can't 00:23:25.799 --> 00:23:28.480 possibly care about postcolonial politics. That 00:23:28.480 --> 00:23:31.440 is precisely the stereotype Adichie despises. 00:23:31.680 --> 00:23:34.259 She loves fashion. She's been very vocal about 00:23:34.259 --> 00:23:36.940 it. She views it as a form of armor, of agency, 00:23:37.319 --> 00:23:41.259 of self -expression. And she made a huge splash 00:23:41.259 --> 00:23:44.279 when she sat front row at the Dior show when 00:23:44.279 --> 00:23:46.940 the new creative director, Maria Grazia Chiuri, 00:23:47.059 --> 00:23:50.099 sent a model down the runway wearing a simple 00:23:50.099 --> 00:23:52.299 white T -shirt that just said, we should all 00:23:52.299 --> 00:23:54.599 be feminists. I remember that shirt. It cost 00:23:54.599 --> 00:23:57.000 something like $800. It did, which sparked a 00:23:57.000 --> 00:23:59.460 whole other debate about capitalism and co -opting 00:23:59.460 --> 00:24:02.440 activism. But Adichie took the idea and made 00:24:02.440 --> 00:24:04.960 it her own in a much more grassroots way. She 00:24:04.960 --> 00:24:08.039 launched the Wear Nigerian campaign on her Instagram. 00:24:08.200 --> 00:24:10.029 This was managed. by her two nieces, right? Yes. 00:24:10.230 --> 00:24:12.970 Chisholm and Amaka. The rule was simple for all 00:24:12.970 --> 00:24:15.230 her public appearances. She would only wear clothing 00:24:15.230 --> 00:24:17.710 made by Nigerian designers. And this wasn't just 00:24:17.710 --> 00:24:19.930 about vanity or looking good. It was a form of 00:24:19.930 --> 00:24:21.930 economic activism. Right. She wanted to boost 00:24:21.930 --> 00:24:24.329 the local industry. She wanted to pump money 00:24:24.329 --> 00:24:27.230 and more importantly, global attention into the 00:24:27.230 --> 00:24:30.009 local textile and design industry. She wanted 00:24:30.009 --> 00:24:32.170 to show the world that Nigerian design was high 00:24:32.170 --> 00:24:34.730 fashion, that it deserved a place on the world 00:24:34.730 --> 00:24:37.519 stage. It was putting her money. And her platform, 00:24:37.779 --> 00:24:39.960 where her mouth is, it even won a Shorty Award 00:24:39.960 --> 00:24:44.019 in 2018. So she is just... Yeah. Everywhere. 00:24:44.220 --> 00:24:46.480 She's a literary bestseller. She's a fashion 00:24:46.480 --> 00:24:50.339 icon. She's a global feminist hero. But when 00:24:50.339 --> 00:24:52.640 you get that big and when you speak your mind 00:24:52.640 --> 00:24:55.559 that freely on so many topics, you're going to 00:24:55.559 --> 00:24:57.619 make enemies. And Adichie has found herself right 00:24:57.619 --> 00:24:59.660 in the middle of some of the most intense culture 00:24:59.660 --> 00:25:02.180 wars of the last decade. She has. And I think 00:25:02.180 --> 00:25:04.579 this is where her complexity really, really shows. 00:25:04.900 --> 00:25:07.099 Because she does not just tow the party line 00:25:07.099 --> 00:25:09.819 of Western progressivism. She thinks for herself. 00:25:10.449 --> 00:25:12.309 Let's maybe start with the media interactions, 00:25:12.470 --> 00:25:15.430 because she had a very famous, very tense run 00:25:15.430 --> 00:25:17.609 in with the BBC about Donald Trump back in 2016. 00:25:17.890 --> 00:25:20.170 Oh, this was a classic ambush interview. She 00:25:20.170 --> 00:25:22.809 went on the BBC's flagship news program, Newsnight, 00:25:22.990 --> 00:25:25.049 thinking she was doing a standard one -on -one 00:25:25.049 --> 00:25:26.990 interview about her work in American politics. 00:25:27.269 --> 00:25:30.089 But that's not what happened. No. The BBC had 00:25:30.089 --> 00:25:32.970 also booked R. Emmett Terrell Jr., who was the 00:25:32.970 --> 00:25:35.509 editor of a very conservative magazine, The American 00:25:35.509 --> 00:25:38.269 Spectator, and a hardcore Trump supporter. And 00:25:38.269 --> 00:25:40.049 they didn't really warn her that she was being 00:25:40.049 --> 00:25:42.049 set up for a debate. So they just pitted her 00:25:42.049 --> 00:25:45.809 against him live on air. Exactly. And Terrell 00:25:45.809 --> 00:25:47.470 was on there making the argument that Donald 00:25:47.470 --> 00:25:51.150 Trump wasn't racist. Adichie very calmly pushed 00:25:51.150 --> 00:25:53.920 back. She cited Trump's comments about Judge 00:25:53.920 --> 00:25:56.359 Gonzalo Curiel. Remember, Trump said the judge 00:25:56.359 --> 00:25:58.319 couldn't do his job fairly because of his Mexican 00:25:58.319 --> 00:25:59.960 heritage. Which is, I mean, that's pretty much 00:25:59.960 --> 00:26:02.880 the textbook definition of racism. It is. But 00:26:02.880 --> 00:26:04.599 when Adichie pointed this out, Terrell looked 00:26:04.599 --> 00:26:06.759 at her very condescendingly and said, I do not 00:26:06.759 --> 00:26:09.460 respond emotionally like this lady. Oh, emotionally. 00:26:09.740 --> 00:26:12.440 Oh. The oldest, most tired trick in the book 00:26:12.440 --> 00:26:15.200 to discredit a woman. A woman has a fact based 00:26:15.200 --> 00:26:17.839 opinion. No, she's just being emotional. Adichie's 00:26:17.839 --> 00:26:20.000 facial expression in that moment was priceless. 00:26:20.099 --> 00:26:23.599 It went viral. She very calmly and coolly dismantled 00:26:23.599 --> 00:26:26.480 his argument. But that specific moment highlighted 00:26:26.480 --> 00:26:29.380 exactly the kind of casual sexism that powerful, 00:26:29.599 --> 00:26:32.579 intellectual women face all the time. But she 00:26:32.579 --> 00:26:35.660 doesn't just fight with the state. Right? She 00:26:35.660 --> 00:26:37.839 famously challenged Hillary Clinton, too. This 00:26:37.839 --> 00:26:39.720 was the Twitter bio thing. I remember this. It 00:26:39.720 --> 00:26:44.000 was in 2018 during a PN World Voices event. She 00:26:44.000 --> 00:26:46.259 was on stage interviewing Clinton, and she asked 00:26:46.259 --> 00:26:49.200 her a very direct question. She said, why does 00:26:49.200 --> 00:26:52.059 your Twitter bio start with the word wife? Oh? 00:26:52.359 --> 00:26:54.920 She pointed out that Bill Clinton's bio didn't 00:26:54.920 --> 00:26:57.519 start with husband. She asked why a woman of 00:26:57.519 --> 00:26:59.539 Hillary Clinton's incredible stature still felt 00:26:59.539 --> 00:27:01.680 the need to define herself by her marriage first 00:27:01.680 --> 00:27:04.359 and foremost. That takes some serious guts. To 00:27:04.359 --> 00:27:06.059 sit next to Hillary Clinton and tell her to fix 00:27:06.059 --> 00:27:07.940 her Twitter bio. It really does. And the amazing 00:27:07.940 --> 00:27:09.900 thing is Clinton actually changes. She took the 00:27:09.900 --> 00:27:12.099 note. But those, you could say, were the safe 00:27:12.099 --> 00:27:15.019 controversies. The one that really caused a massive 00:27:15.019 --> 00:27:17.200 fracture in her progressive fan base was the 00:27:17.200 --> 00:27:19.859 issue of transgender rights. Yeah, this is the 00:27:19.859 --> 00:27:21.740 big one. And it's complicated. It started around 00:27:21.740 --> 00:27:25.160 2017 in an interview she did with Channel 4 in 00:27:25.160 --> 00:27:28.299 the UK. What exactly did she say? Because it 00:27:28.299 --> 00:27:30.680 gets misquoted and simplified all the time. It 00:27:30.680 --> 00:27:33.210 does. So the interviewer asked her if... Trans 00:27:33.210 --> 00:27:35.650 women are women. And Adichie's initial answer 00:27:35.650 --> 00:27:37.750 was, yes, trans women are women. But then she 00:27:37.750 --> 00:27:40.569 added a distinction, a piece of nuance. She said 00:27:40.569 --> 00:27:42.569 that a trans woman's experience of womanhood 00:27:42.569 --> 00:27:44.769 is not the same as the experience of a woman 00:27:44.769 --> 00:27:47.049 who was born and raised female from birth. And 00:27:47.049 --> 00:27:49.130 what was her reasoning for that? Her argument 00:27:49.130 --> 00:27:51.549 was that a trans woman prior to transitioning. 00:27:52.349 --> 00:27:54.849 lived in the world being perceived as male and 00:27:54.849 --> 00:27:57.109 therefore for a portion of her life benefited 00:27:57.109 --> 00:28:00.410 from male privilege. She argued that that socialization 00:28:00.410 --> 00:28:03.109 matters, that it shapes your experience, and 00:28:03.109 --> 00:28:05.950 to pretend it doesn't exist is to erase a significant 00:28:05.950 --> 00:28:08.630 part of the story. And the backlash was immediate 00:28:08.630 --> 00:28:11.920 and intense. It was fierce. Critics argued that 00:28:11.920 --> 00:28:14.000 she was creating a hierarchy of womanhood, that 00:28:14.000 --> 00:28:16.420 she was basically saying trans women were lesser 00:28:16.420 --> 00:28:20.119 women or women with an asterisk. One of her own 00:28:20.119 --> 00:28:22.240 former students from her writing workshop, the 00:28:22.240 --> 00:28:24.519 celebrated non -binary writer Akwaeke Emezi, 00:28:24.680 --> 00:28:27.980 publicly and very strongly called her out. Adichie 00:28:27.980 --> 00:28:31.039 was almost instantly labeled a TERF, a trans 00:28:31.039 --> 00:28:33.200 exclusionary radical feminist by a large part 00:28:33.200 --> 00:28:34.980 of the online community. So what did she do? 00:28:35.079 --> 00:28:37.180 Did she apologize? Walk it back. Because the 00:28:37.180 --> 00:28:40.069 standard PR move in that situation. is to issue 00:28:40.069 --> 00:28:42.130 a statement saying, I'm listening and learning 00:28:42.130 --> 00:28:43.990 and I'm sorry for the harm I caused. She did 00:28:43.990 --> 00:28:46.630 not do the standard PR move at all. She doubled 00:28:46.630 --> 00:28:49.609 down on her belief in nuance. In 2020, when J 00:28:49.609 --> 00:28:52.349 .K. Rowling published her now infamous very long 00:28:52.349 --> 00:28:55.210 essay on sex and gender, Adichie publicly called 00:28:55.210 --> 00:28:58.049 it a perfectly reasonable piece. And then in 00:28:58.049 --> 00:29:00.670 2021, Adichie published a massive three -part 00:29:00.670 --> 00:29:02.890 essay on her own website titled It Is Obscene. 00:29:03.049 --> 00:29:05.069 I read that essay. It was. It was scorching. 00:29:05.089 --> 00:29:07.069 It was a declaration of war. It was a scorched 00:29:07.069 --> 00:29:09.700 earth critique of what she sees as the tactics 00:29:09.700 --> 00:29:12.799 of cancel culture. She didn't really relitigate 00:29:12.799 --> 00:29:16.059 the specific trans debate in the essay. Instead, 00:29:16.220 --> 00:29:18.579 she attacked the behavior of her critics, particularly 00:29:18.579 --> 00:29:20.839 the former students she felt had betrayed her. 00:29:21.019 --> 00:29:23.579 She argued that social media has created a generation 00:29:23.579 --> 00:29:26.900 that demands ideological purity that is choking 00:29:26.900 --> 00:29:29.779 on sanctimony and that uses abstract academic 00:29:29.779 --> 00:29:33.799 words like. violence to describe mere disagreement. 00:29:33.880 --> 00:29:36.400 So her core argument became less about gender 00:29:36.400 --> 00:29:38.400 theory and more about freedom of speech. It was 00:29:38.400 --> 00:29:40.700 you can disagree with me, but trying to destroy 00:29:40.700 --> 00:29:42.599 my reputation and career because I acknowledge 00:29:42.599 --> 00:29:45.539 biological sex is toxic and obscene. Exactly. 00:29:45.539 --> 00:29:47.500 And what's so important to add here is the geographical 00:29:47.500 --> 00:29:50.000 context. While she was being painted as this 00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:53.000 conservative, transphobic villain in the U .S. 00:29:53.000 --> 00:29:55.019 and the U .K. for these comments back in her 00:29:55.019 --> 00:29:57.799 home country of Nigeria, she's considered a radical 00:29:57.799 --> 00:29:59.819 progressive on these very issues. Right, because 00:29:59.819 --> 00:30:02.599 Nigeria passed a really harsh anti -gay law in 00:30:02.599 --> 00:30:06.279 2014. A truly draconian law. the Same -Sex Marriage 00:30:06.279 --> 00:30:09.279 Prohibition Act. It criminalizes gay relationships 00:30:09.279 --> 00:30:12.559 with up to 14 years in prison. And Chimamanda 00:30:12.559 --> 00:30:15.279 was one of the loudest, most prominent Nigerian 00:30:15.279 --> 00:30:18.160 voices opposing that law. She wrote essays calling 00:30:18.160 --> 00:30:21.220 it unjust and un -African. She was best friends 00:30:21.220 --> 00:30:23.880 with Binyavongo Wainaina, a prominent Kenyan 00:30:23.880 --> 00:30:26.579 writer who was openly gay. She eulogized him 00:30:26.579 --> 00:30:28.640 beautifully when he died. So the narrative that 00:30:28.640 --> 00:30:33.339 she is... broadly anti -LGBT's just. It's too 00:30:33.339 --> 00:30:35.099 simple. That doesn't hold up. It's a single story. 00:30:35.220 --> 00:30:38.359 She supports gay rights legally and vocally in 00:30:38.359 --> 00:30:40.660 a place where it is genuinely dangerous to do 00:30:40.660 --> 00:30:43.319 so. But she refuses to align perfectly with the 00:30:43.319 --> 00:30:45.779 very latest Western academic theories on gender 00:30:45.779 --> 00:30:48.480 identity. She's ideologically independent. It 00:30:48.480 --> 00:30:50.630 goes right back to that core idea. You can't 00:30:50.630 --> 00:30:52.670 just put her in the liberal hero box or the conservative 00:30:52.670 --> 00:30:55.529 villain box. She simply will not fit. She navigates 00:30:55.529 --> 00:30:57.289 by her own compass, for better or for worse. 00:30:57.490 --> 00:30:59.309 Now, we have to move to the most recent chapter 00:30:59.309 --> 00:31:01.750 of her life. And this is by far the hardest part 00:31:01.750 --> 00:31:04.210 to talk about. The last few years, really from 00:31:04.210 --> 00:31:07.710 2020 leading up to today in 2026, have been defined 00:31:07.710 --> 00:31:11.109 by just wave after wave of unimaginable grief 00:31:11.109 --> 00:31:13.140 for her. It really started with the pandemic. 00:31:13.480 --> 00:31:16.700 In June of 2020, her beloved father died suddenly 00:31:16.700 --> 00:31:19.500 of complications from kidney failure. And because 00:31:19.500 --> 00:31:21.619 of all the COVID lockdowns and travel restrictions, 00:31:21.940 --> 00:31:24.480 she was stuck in the U .S. She couldn't get back 00:31:24.480 --> 00:31:26.859 to Nigeria to be with him or to bury him immediately. 00:31:27.119 --> 00:31:29.940 For someone from a culture where those funeral 00:31:29.940 --> 00:31:32.420 rites are so important, it was a special kind 00:31:32.420 --> 00:31:34.700 of torture for her. And then before she could 00:31:34.700 --> 00:31:37.019 even begin to process that loss. Her mother died. 00:31:37.529 --> 00:31:40.769 In March of 2021, on her late husband's birthday 00:31:40.769 --> 00:31:43.190 of all days, so within the space of about nine 00:31:43.190 --> 00:31:45.890 months, she lost both anchors of her life. The 00:31:45.890 --> 00:31:48.130 two people who raised her in that Chinua Achebe 00:31:48.130 --> 00:31:51.089 house. She wrote a beautiful, gut -wrenching 00:31:51.089 --> 00:31:53.569 memoir about this called Notes on Grief. I took 00:31:53.569 --> 00:31:55.309 a look at that. She talks about the madness of 00:31:55.309 --> 00:31:58.009 grief. How it's not just sadness. It's a physical 00:31:58.009 --> 00:32:01.309 unraveling. It's a rage. She describes it as 00:32:01.309 --> 00:32:04.289 a cruel kind of education. She writes about how 00:32:04.289 --> 00:32:06.930 the actual sides of her ribs hurt from the force 00:32:06.930 --> 00:32:09.329 of her crying. It also changed her relationship 00:32:09.329 --> 00:32:11.990 with religion. She was raised Catholic, as we 00:32:11.990 --> 00:32:14.630 said, but drifted away because she felt the Nigerian 00:32:14.630 --> 00:32:17.609 church was too focused on money and guilt. But 00:32:17.609 --> 00:32:19.849 in her grief, she found herself drawn back to 00:32:19.849 --> 00:32:22.630 the rituals, to the comfort of the familiar prayers, 00:32:22.789 --> 00:32:24.750 though she describes herself now as fundamentally 00:32:24.750 --> 00:32:27.980 agnostic and questioning. And during all this 00:32:27.980 --> 00:32:29.900 time, she was also raising her own family. She 00:32:29.900 --> 00:32:32.759 has a daughter who was born in 2016. And then 00:32:32.759 --> 00:32:35.880 very privately, she had twin boys in 2024 who 00:32:35.880 --> 00:32:38.460 were born via a surrogate. She kept the birth 00:32:38.460 --> 00:32:41.119 of the twins very quiet. She's fiercely protective 00:32:41.119 --> 00:32:43.579 of her children's privacy. She even wrote a wonderful 00:32:43.579 --> 00:32:45.940 children's book last year, Mama's Sleeping Scarf, 00:32:45.940 --> 00:32:49.000 but she published it under a pseudonym. Nua Grace 00:32:49.000 --> 00:32:52.140 James. Which means? Child of Grace and James. 00:32:52.319 --> 00:32:54.599 It was a tribute to her late parents. It was 00:32:54.599 --> 00:32:57.180 the sweet, gentle period of new motherhood after 00:32:57.180 --> 00:33:01.339 so much loss. But then, then we arrive at January 00:33:01.339 --> 00:33:04.420 7th, 2026. This is the news that is still breaking 00:33:04.420 --> 00:33:09.339 as we record this. Her son, Nkanu. Yes. Nkanu 00:33:09.339 --> 00:33:11.859 Nandamdi. One of the twins. He was only 21 months 00:33:11.859 --> 00:33:14.599 old. And the details that Adichie and her family 00:33:14.599 --> 00:33:17.569 have released are just. they make you sick with 00:33:17.569 --> 00:33:20.269 anger this wasn't a tragic illness or an accident 00:33:20.269 --> 00:33:23.579 she alleges it was pure Medical negligence. She 00:33:23.579 --> 00:33:25.660 has been very, very specific in her allegations. 00:33:26.059 --> 00:33:28.759 He was admitted to your care hospital in Lagos, 00:33:28.779 --> 00:33:31.079 which is meant to be a high end top tier facility. 00:33:31.599 --> 00:33:33.799 She alleges that when he went into respiratory 00:33:33.799 --> 00:33:36.240 distress, he was denied oxygen because the staff 00:33:36.240 --> 00:33:38.740 couldn't find the key to the supply room or didn't 00:33:38.740 --> 00:33:41.319 have the supply ready. She also claims they sedated 00:33:41.319 --> 00:33:43.519 him excessively, which she believes led to a 00:33:43.519 --> 00:33:45.640 heart attack. A heart attack in a toddler. That 00:33:45.640 --> 00:33:48.430 is her allegation. The hospital, as you'd expect, 00:33:48.549 --> 00:33:50.910 has denied it. They've cited patient confidentiality 00:33:50.910 --> 00:33:52.910 and insisted they followed standard procedures. 00:33:53.210 --> 00:33:56.809 But Adichie is furious. And her public fury has 00:33:56.809 --> 00:33:59.529 ignited this massive, painful conversation in 00:33:59.529 --> 00:34:01.710 Nigeria. Because the question everyone is asking 00:34:01.710 --> 00:34:05.069 is, if Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a woman with 00:34:05.069 --> 00:34:07.529 money, with global fame, with powerful connections, 00:34:07.750 --> 00:34:11.389 if she can't get safe, basic medical care for 00:34:11.389 --> 00:34:14.849 her child in the best hospital in Lagos, then 00:34:14.849 --> 00:34:17.010 who can? What hope is there for anyone else? 00:34:17.489 --> 00:34:20.469 Precisely. It exposes the utter systemic collapse 00:34:20.469 --> 00:34:22.349 of the healthcare infrastructure in the country. 00:34:22.650 --> 00:34:25.429 And it's a tragedy that has become a national 00:34:25.429 --> 00:34:27.949 rallying cry. We're seeing protests, op -eds, 00:34:28.010 --> 00:34:30.710 but for her personally, it is a devastation that 00:34:30.710 --> 00:34:33.389 we can't even begin to comprehend. And this happened 00:34:33.389 --> 00:34:35.969 right after she released her first novel in over 00:34:35.969 --> 00:34:39.690 a decade. Dreamcount in 2025. The timing is just 00:34:39.690 --> 00:34:42.650 another layer of cruelty. Dreamcount is getting 00:34:42.650 --> 00:34:45.550 incredible reviews. It deals with many of her 00:34:45.550 --> 00:34:48.670 classic themes, the grit of womanhood, the physical 00:34:48.670 --> 00:34:51.710 realities of the female body. And now she is 00:34:51.710 --> 00:34:54.510 living through the ultimate. brutal physical 00:34:54.510 --> 00:34:57.369 reality of loss. It puts her entire career, her 00:34:57.369 --> 00:34:59.909 entire public life in this state of suspended 00:34:59.909 --> 00:35:02.530 animation. How do you go on a book tour when 00:35:02.530 --> 00:35:04.530 you have just buried your child? You don't. You 00:35:04.530 --> 00:35:06.409 just survive. You survive. So as we look at this 00:35:06.409 --> 00:35:08.349 entire arc, from the little girl in Nasuka writing 00:35:08.349 --> 00:35:11.650 stories about snow, to the global literary titan, 00:35:11.650 --> 00:35:13.769 to this grieving mother demanding justice, what 00:35:13.769 --> 00:35:15.670 is the legacy she's building? I know she received 00:35:15.670 --> 00:35:17.289 a very special title recently, her hometown. 00:35:17.570 --> 00:35:21.210 She did. In December of 2022, she was given a 00:35:21.210 --> 00:35:23.820 chieftaincy title in her ancestral town of Aba. 00:35:23.840 --> 00:35:26.460 The title is Odolua. And what does that translate 00:35:26.460 --> 00:35:30.000 to? The one who writes for the world. Wow. That 00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:32.920 is... That's perfect. It really is. And she was 00:35:32.920 --> 00:35:35.119 the first woman in the history of her town to 00:35:35.119 --> 00:35:37.059 receive that specific title. And I think that 00:35:37.059 --> 00:35:39.619 just sums it all up. She writes for the world, 00:35:39.659 --> 00:35:42.159 but she writes from Africa. She didn't have to 00:35:42.159 --> 00:35:44.539 shed her identity, her Nigerian -ness to become 00:35:44.539 --> 00:35:47.559 a global star. She forced the world to come to 00:35:47.559 --> 00:35:50.159 her, to meet her on her own terms. And she forced 00:35:50.159 --> 00:35:53.280 us and continues to force us to deal with complexity. 00:35:53.519 --> 00:35:55.960 That, I think, is the final most important takeaway. 00:35:56.510 --> 00:35:58.869 In one of her recent BBC Reith lectures, she 00:35:58.869 --> 00:36:00.210 said something that really stuck with me. She 00:36:00.210 --> 00:36:02.530 said that literature is in peril. She warned 00:36:02.530 --> 00:36:05.250 that if we as a culture demand ideological purity, 00:36:05.489 --> 00:36:08.510 if we demand that our writers never offend us, 00:36:08.610 --> 00:36:11.289 never challenge our dogmas, never have bad or 00:36:11.289 --> 00:36:14.210 complicated opinions, we will kill storytelling 00:36:14.210 --> 00:36:17.250 itself. She insists on friction. She insists 00:36:17.250 --> 00:36:20.630 on friction. She insists that people are messy 00:36:20.630 --> 00:36:24.409 and flawed. Her work and her life is a testament 00:36:24.409 --> 00:36:27.530 to the fact that there is danger, profound danger, 00:36:27.690 --> 00:36:30.429 in ever settling for a single story about anyone, 00:36:30.690 --> 00:36:33.190 including herself. She's not a single story. 00:36:33.329 --> 00:36:35.670 And brilliant, and controversial, and human. 00:36:35.869 --> 00:36:38.269 And that is why she matters so much. That feels 00:36:38.269 --> 00:36:40.630 like a powerful place to leave it. This has been 00:36:40.630 --> 00:36:43.309 a heavy one, but an important one. I feel like 00:36:43.309 --> 00:36:45.909 I understand the stakes of her work and her life 00:36:45.909 --> 00:36:48.389 so much better now. It's a necessary conversation 00:36:48.389 --> 00:36:50.130 to have. To everyone listening, take care of 00:36:50.130 --> 00:36:52.150 yourselves. We'll be back with another Deep Dog 00:36:52.150 --> 00:36:52.389 soon.