While we’re thinking ‘Light and Shade’ here at SPICE this month, award-winning Nigerian author, Chimimanda Ngozie Adichie has been talking about race with Vogue Magazine, being feautrued with an interview in the mag’s April’15 issue.
The talent, whose latest tome Americanah will star Lupita Nyong’o and David Oyelowo in its film adaptation set for release this year, also talks of her collaboration with Beyonce – Vogue describing Ms Adichie as “Beyoncé’s favourite feminist” following the star sampling the author’s popular TED talk for the single “Flawless,” released on Bey’s suprise album last year.
Chimamanda told Vogue of the talk and being featured on Beyonce’s single;
“I was still writing it when I went up to speak, and afterwards, clearly people had listened, clearly people felt strongly about it… I knew this wasn’t a comfortable subject, particularly for the people I was addressing, an African audience.
… I really do think Beyoncé is a force for good, as much as celebrity things go… there has been lot of talk in the past year about how feminism is ‘cool’ now, but I think if we are honest, it’s not a subject that’s easy.
She didn’t have to do this, she could have taken on, I don’t know, world peace. Or nothing at all. And I realise that so many young people in our celebrity-obsessed world, well, suddenly they are thinking about this. And that’s a wonderful thing. So I don’t have any reservations about having said yes.”
The writer, who has had great success with her novels Half of a Yellow Sun and Purple Hibiscus, spoke on her interest in race and in particular, US culture’s treatment of black people – a subject that’s highlighted in her novel Americanah – telling Vogue‘s interviewer, Erica Wagner;
“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.
…I think the similarity is that you are expected to be perfect and pure before you can get any sympathy, any human empathy.”
Chimamanda also star’s in Vogue’s “Today I’m Wearing” feature (as we first reported here) – a digital wardrobe diary showing Ms Adichie’s daily outfits – and while it serves to satisfy our thirst for her flawless fashion, we at SPICE suggest you read the full interview with Ms Adichie in Vogue‘s April’15 issue, here for your fill of intuitive thinking from one of Nigeria’s brightest stars.
Image source: Vogue.co.uk
