We don’t do race in Nigeria, we do ethnicity… a lot || Chimamanda Adichie speaks exclusively to Vogue

by Chinwe Okafor

Chimamanda Adichie spoke exclusively to Vogue recently about a lot of things such as feminism and racism in Nigeria as well as Selma amongst other things. Here are excerpts from topics-

Feminism – gender equality – is a cause she cares about passionately. You don’t have to spend long in Nigeria to witness the deeply patriarchal nature of the culture, where men are always greeted as “sir” and women are lucky to be greeted at all. But Adichie was brought up in a progressive household. Born in 1977 in eastern Nigeria, she grew up in Nsukka, a university town. That part of the country is still, she says, the place where her soul is most at home; she dreams of having a farm there one day. Her father, James, was professor of statistics and, later, vice-chancellor at the University of Nigeria; Grace, her mother, was the university’s first female registrar – no small achievement. As it happens, her parents were staying with her when we met, in the beautiful stone-floored house she built about a year ago. Married 51 years, they have a pride in their daughter that shines in their faces, as does her love for them. Right from the beginning, her books were distinguished by strong female voices: Kambili in Purple Hibiscus, Olanna in Half of a Yellow Sun, Ifemelu in Americanah.

Talking about race with Adichie is fascinating. “I only became black when I came to America,” she writes in Americanah; her character Ifemelu’s experience is drawn from her own. “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.” But it has been part of hers in America, where her experience “is always shaped by race. Somebody sends a limo to pick me up, and I just notice an attitude that the white, older male driver has. He’s thinking, that’s who I’m picking up? And I can’t help thinking, if I were white, would he have a problem? If I were black and male, would he have a problem?” She has focused her attention on gender inequality because here in Nigeria, that’s her primary experience of inequality. In Nigeria she would know why a driver would have a problem with her: “Because I’m a woman.”
But all the same, she says she was “personally furious” that Ava DuVernay’s film about the American civil rights marches, Selma, was almost entirely overlooked by the Oscars. “I took that very personally. It’s almost a slap in the face for a person who wants to believe in some kind of progress; 2014 was such a difficult year for America and race.” She doesn’t even have to mention the riots in Ferguson, Missouri, following the shooting of Michael Brown by the police, or the death of Eric Garner in New York, and the protests that followed; those events hang in the air between us. “Even when I’m not in the US, I follow what’s going on, I’m very emotionally invested. And I find myself thinking that maybe I’ll write an essay about it: looking at the idea that there’s something similar in the way that American society looks at black men who commit crime and women of any colour who report a rape. And I think the similarity is that you are expected to be perfect and pure before you can get any sympathy, any human empathy. ‘Well, the kid stole cigarettes, so he asked for it, right?'” Brown was alleged to have stolen a box of cigarettes. “Like, ‘Well, she wore a short skirt.’ It’s so ugly. 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.”
She 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.” 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.”

Read the rest of the exclusive interview HERE