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The Political Scene | The New Yorker

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on Discovering America

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

The New Yorker

President, Barack, News, Politics, Wnyc, Obama, Lizza, Washington, Wickenden

4.33.9K Ratings

🗓️ 29 January 2018

⏱️ 22 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has had commercial and critical success: Her best-seller “Americanah” won a National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, and a speech she gave on feminism was sampled by Beyoncé. But Adichie is skeptical of fame, and not afraid to voice controversial opinions. At The New Yorker Festival in October, 2017, she spoke with David Remnick about how the left in this country seems “cannibalistic,” and how, as a Nigerian immigrant to America, she at first distanced herself from our country’s conception of blackness. America was complicated for Adichie: she appreciated the freedom from the social hierarchies back home, but she had imagined everything would be newer and shinier than it really was.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:44.0

Things people love.

0:48.8

I'm Dorothy Wickendon.

0:50.3

On today's Politics and More Podcast, David Remnick talks with the writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichet at the 2017 New Yorker Festival.

1:01.3

The novelist Chimamanda Ingoza Adichie, who was born in Nigeria, has won a raft of awards, including the genius grants as it's known, the MacArthur Fellowship, and a National

1:11.7

Book Critic Circle Award for her best-selling novel, Americana.

1:15.9

But who cares about that?

1:17.1

Because how many fiction writers have been sampled by Beyonce?

1:23.3

We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller.

1:27.4

We say to girls, you can have ambition, to make themselves smaller.

1:31.4

We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much.

1:34.8

You should aim to be successful, but not too successful.

1:36.7

Otherwise, you will threaten the man.

1:41.4

Because I am female, I'm expected to aspire to marriage.

...

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