Nigeria Content Online

At a book reading attended by hundreds of students at the Community Hall of the American University of Nigeria, Yola on Wednesday, March 9, Orange Prize winning author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie interacted with the students and gave writing tips book.

She came after three years of intense search

The event was organised by three student groups of the university, including, Women’s Leadership Council; the Honours Society and the Society of Ethics and leadership who said the hunt for the celebrated writer started three years ago. Their aim was to benefit from the leadership and scholarship Adichie, an international literary icon and author of three books including ‘Purple Hibiscus’ and the Biafran War epic, ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’.

Head of the student groups, Peace Ugochukwu, said, “As a president of the Women Leadership Council, Chimamanda excites me as an individual and I decided that it will be good for other women to listen to someone like her. She is an intelligent role model and I thought students should listen to this African icon that has something to offer. I believe she is a leader in every right, redefining the perception of Nigeria through literature so that other young Nigerians can see that in any little way you work, you can change a dream.”

‘The thing around your neck’

Adichie read from her latest book, ‘The thing around your neck’, a collection of short stories. Noting that her audience comprised students, she acknowledged the need to read a portion that would make sense to them and address the menace of cultism. “I tried to find things that might resonate with the audience, so the sections that I read when I am promoting the book in the US I won’t read here, because people might be bored and would not get the humour.” Introducing the story she was to read from, ‘Cell One’, she said, “This is a university. I don’t know if AUN has a cult problem. This is a story about cultism which is now a huge problem in university campuses in this nation where young men kill each other and this story is just about that.” Of the book itself, the author offered that, “It is a collection of stories written over a wide range of time. One was written in 1999. Different stories, different circumstances and settings.” Cell One

“I am going to read… a short excerpt from ‘Cell One’; it is set in Nsukka where I grew up,” Adichie said before launching into the reading proper.

“The first time our house was robbed it was our neighbor Osita who climbed in through our dining room window and stole our TV, VCR and video tapes our father brought back from America.

The second time our house was robbed, it was my brother Nnamabia who stole my mother’s jewelry. My parents had travelled to our hometown Mbaise to visit our grandparents, so Nnamabia and I went to church alone. He drove my mother’s green Peugeot 504, we sat together in church as we normally did. Nnamabia left without a word after about ten minutes. He came back just before the priest said: the mass is ended, go in peace. I was a little girl. I imagined that he had gone off to smoke and to see some girl since he had the car to himself for once but he could at least have told me where he was going.” This segment, the author explained, was to draw students’ attention to what happened in a campus environment once known to be serene, peaceful and civil, adding that most of her stories were not true life experiences but were rather the stories of other people.

Write after reading

Adichie then challenged the studentsto begin to write their own stories. She advised thatwriting requires innate ability which spurs on interest and hard work, adding that those who do not read cannot write well.

“I have observed that some people want to be writers but don’t read,” she said. “You have to read. If you want to write a book, take out a year and self-educate. Read and then tell your stories. Don’t force yourself to write a book. You don’t have to write a book but you can try your hand on short stories.”

Writing ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’

The author shared her experience of growth as a writer, culminating in the publication of ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ in 2006, to international acclaim. “I made a choice to write. When I was four I was writing on everything and was constantly asking questions. I made a choice to read as much as I could. For a long time as a child I was almost haunted by Biafra, especially the way my family will talk about before the war and after the war. My father will start a story and end it with ‘the war’. That made me feel that there are spaces in my family history that I needed to fill. ” As a teenager, I began to read about Biafra, everything that was published about the Biafra: archives, monument, library, the way it has been covered by the British press, some of the music that was played. I wanted to immerse myself in that period. After that I realised that I have the facts. I wanted the human truth because I realised that, to write a novel ,it is really difficult to do with only history books. Many of them were so boring. I turned to my father and asked questions, then to my uncle who fought in the war, my cousins who were there. It came to a point that I was asking people: where were you in 1966? It was a way of getting the truth because I know that a lot of history has been written about the war but I wanted to write about how people can experience the war. After three years, I felt I was done.”

On Igbo language

She also explained why she introduces snippets of the Igbo language in most of her writings. “A lot of instances when I use Igbo, I do it in a context that even the non-Igbo speaker will understand,” she said. She writes about characters who speak bothEnglish and Igbo often at the same time, because she belongs to a generation of people who can no longer speak Igbo entirely without inserting an English word here and there.

“I wanted to capture the idea and texture of people speaking and negotiating two languages,” she disclosed. “In the editing process, I went back to make sure that the context was enough to understand and even if you do not, it was not sufficient to confuse you. I think about books that I have read in which the characters were English but threw in French, Spanish and people don’t complain. Why can’t Igbo and Yoruba be thrown in also? A Danish woman while I was in Denmark once asked me: Kedu? (‘How are you?’ in Igbo). That is what she learnt from my book. I am making people learn Igbo through my works.” The visit by the award winning author of ‘Purple Hibiscus’ to the American University of Nigeria ,Yola started with a breakfast meeting with the student leaders and faculties. Then followed a tour of the university environment in the afternoon, ending with the book reading event in the evening. Key attendance were pupils from ABTI Nursery and Primary school; secondary school students from ABTI Academy and university undergraduates from the AUN.