Facts:
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Tedtalk “The Danger of a Single Story” has amassed over 9 million views on Youtube
- Adichie addressed Harvard’s Class of 2018 and Yale’s Class of 2019
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born on September 15th, 1977 in Nigeria, specifically hailing from an Igbo family. Both her parents worked at the University of Nigeria, however much of their family members including maternal/paternal grandparents and progress were lost to the Nigerian Civil War. Adichie attended the University of Nigeria to study pharmacy and was an editor for a student-run medical magazine. She later studied political science at Drexel University in the United States, later completing a master's in creative writing at Johns Hopkins and earning honorary doctorates from various colleges throughout her career.
Adichie is well known for her writing that has been translated into more than 30 languages and is also inspired by fellow Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. Some notable novels include “Purple Hibiscus,” “Half a Yellow Sun,” and “Americanah,” which are all award-winning. Adichie’s career is also marked by her TEDtalks(lectures for TED), such as “The Danger of a Single Story” which discussed cultural under-representation and stories being in the perspective of colonizers, and “We Should All Be Feminists” which shares her experiences and views as an African feminist. Both TED lectures have amassed millions of views on the internet. (About Chimamanda).
In connection to her career fueled by storytelling, Adichie has received much attention, such as being listed in The New Yorker’s “20 under 40” in 2010, having authored one of BBC’s “Top Ten Books of 2013,” and listed among Time Magazine’s “The 100 Most Influential People” in 2015. Her book “Purple Hibiscus” won awards such as the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Africa and countries overall, and her other novel “Americanah” has won The Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for fiction. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie divides her time between the US and Nigeria to not only teach writing but to instill a love and sense of importance to storytelling, which also shows through her work(Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie).
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