Author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Woman's Hour
BBC
4.1 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 3 June 2021
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the author of novels including 'Purple Hibiscus', 'Half of a Yellow Sun', which won the Orange Prize (now called the Women’s Prize for Fiction), and 'Americanah', which won the US National Book Critics Circle Award. Chimamanda has also delivered two landmark TED Talks: The Danger of A Single Story, and We Should All Be Feminists, which started a worldwide conversation about feminism and was published as a book in 2014. She has now written a more personal book. On 10 June 2020 her father died suddenly in Nigeria. A self-confessed daddy’s girl, she has now remembered her father in a tribute, 'Notes on Grief'. Her mother has since also died. How do you deal with double heartbreak? Chimamanda joins Emma to examine the layers of loss and the nature of grief.
Lord Michael Heseltine, who was Deputy Prime Minister in the mid-nineties, says he's had to attend a House of Lords course to do with what's right and what's wrong when it comes to conduct between colleagues, especially between men and women. The training is called "Valuing Everyone". The House of Lords has been very firm about this online course on inappropriate behaviour and prejudice, saying all peers must attend. Lord Heseltine was sent a reminder that he MUST complete it, which seems to have aggravated him a great deal. He’s here, and so is Wera (pron: VERA) Hobhouse, Lib Dem MP. In the House of Commons, the course isn't mandatory for MPs.
Parm Sandhu grew up in the Midlands - a child of immigrants from the Punjab whose main ambition for her she says was to become an ‘obedient wife’. Forced into an arranged marriage at 16 she later fled to London and in 1989 joined the police. In her memoir ‘Black and Blue: One Woman’s Story of policing’ which is out next week, she tells her story of her thirty years in the Metropolitan police - rising through the ranks from a WPC to Chief Superintendent and becoming New Scotland Yard’s most senior ethnic minority woman in the force. She tells us her 30 year career was marred by repeated racism and sexism and a charge of gross misconduct which she was later cleared of. This led to her bringing an employment tribunal claim against the force and reaching a financial settlement with them last year.
The sun is out and if you’re looking out your summer dresses and skirts you might also be weighing up the state of your skin after months of slobbing at home in your lockdown comfies. Sales of personal grooming products like deodorant, skincare products and razors went down during the pandemic so will we be embracing the natural look? Or maybe you already do as a member of the hairy legs club? We talk to the stand-up comedian, Ashley Storrie about her beauty regime and also to George Driver, the acting Beauty Director of ELLE UK.
Presenter: Emma Barnett Producer: Kirsty Starkey
Interviewed Guest: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Interviewed Guest: Michael Heseltine Interviewed Guest: Wera Hobhouse Interviewed Guest: Parm Sandhu Interviewed Guest: Ashley Storrie Interviewed Guest: George Driver
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.6 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.4 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable |
| 0:14.3 | experts and genuinely engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC |
| 0:20.4 | makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | BBC Sounds, Music Radio Podcasts. |
| 0:41.0 | Hello I'm Emma Barnet and welcome to Womensa from BBC. podcasts. of Purple Obiscus, half of a yellow son and Americana and two TED Talks that went global. |
| 0:55.8 | But her latest book concerns something completely different, grief, and is based on her deeply |
| 1:01.4 | personal experience of losing her father suddenly last year in the middle of the pandemic. |
| 1:07.0 | I'll talk to her shortly, but one of the stories in the book is about how she decided to pay tribute to her dad. |
| 1:12.0 | By customising a t-shirt with the words |
| 1:14.7 | her father's daughter fitting for a self-confessed daddy's go. She says the |
| 1:19.4 | experience of trying to pay tribute allowed her to finally understand why people get tattoos. |
| 1:24.4 | And what I want to ask you today is how have you celebrated or marked the life of a loved |
| 1:29.0 | one? What are the different ways that you have paid tribute to them. It could be building something, designing |
| 1:34.8 | something, arranging an event. Tell me and in the process of sharing with us this morning, |
| 1:39.7 | you're also remembering them, whoever they are. I was only thinking about this earlier this |
| 1:44.0 | week because I got the news that I lost my godmother. She's 92, an absolute tour to |
| 1:49.0 | force in my life, but I was thinking apart from blowing up a fabulous photo of her and putting it on the wall and framing it that perhaps I'll throw an afternoon tea on account of her sweet tooth in her memory. |
| 1:59.0 | But what about you? What is it that you have done to commemorate those loved ones in your life? |
... |
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