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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Novelist and essayist

Nigeria · b. 1977

Nigerian novelist and essayist, author of Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun, Americanah and the essays We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele. She began a medical degree in Nigeria before leaving to study in the United States.

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How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure?
But after one year of medical school I fled. I realized I would be a very unhappy doctor and I really did not want to be responsible for the inadvertent death of my patients. Leaving medical school was a very unusual decision, especially in Nigeria where it is very difficult to get into medical school. Later, people told me that it had been very courageous of me, but I did not feel courageous at all. What I felt then was not courage but a desire to make an effort. To try.

Recorded Wellesley College 137th Commencement, 29 May 2015 source

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In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to?
To get this prize, I was required to talk about how important a particular European feminist woman writer had been to me. Now the truth was that I had never managed to finish this feminist writer’s book. It did not speak to me. It would have been a lie to claim that she had any major influence on my thinking. […] I could have said that this woman was important to me, and I could have talked the talk, and I could have been given the prize and a shiny present. But I didn’t.

Recorded Wellesley College 137th Commencement, 29 May 2015 source

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What advice would you give your twenty-year-old self, and what should they ignore?
All over the world, girls are raised to be make themselves likeable, to twist themselves into shapes that suit other people. Please do not twist yourself into shapes to please. Don’t do it. If someone likes that version of you, that version of you that is false and holds back, then they actually just like that twisted shape, and not you.

Recorded Wellesley College 137th Commencement, 29 May 2015 source

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