The whole place was on its head. Guess it has to be that way when a Queen comes visiting.
The correspondence too was unprecedented – from AWF Abuja office, to the Embassy of the United States which collaborated with AWF to host Chimamanda, to Lagos where Okey, her indefatigable PA takes care of things, and across the Atlantic to the U.S. from where her email originated. As the load of activities was heavy, so was the Guest Writer’s proposed itinerary. She would do a writing workshop first thing in the day (May 15). She would read and sign books for her audience later. And the Counsellor for Public Affairs at the American Embassy, Peter Claussen, would host her and other literary figures to a dinner, same day in his residence, by 7pm. This looked good on paper. Getting things into shape was another matter.
By the time I arrived the Cyprian Ekwensi Centre for Arts and Culture (CEAC), Mohammed of the CEAC, and Ben Okpogor of the Embassy were on ground. Mohammed worked on the sitting arrangement; Ben was the technical man, and his “hello, testing, testing,” on the microphones was a constant reminder that a technical man was around. I joined in getting the venue of the writing workshop ready. ‘Chimamanda Adichie’s (Special) Creative Writing Workshop, Abuja ,’ I wrote on a board, and placed it outside the hall for easy identification by workshop participants. They soon began to walk in; Peace Ugochukwu was the first. She was full of energy, and she was on a mission too. She had been in touch with me days earlier, wanting to get in touch with Chimamanda from her American University , Yola. Her selection as a participant at the workshop was the clincher. “I want to get her to come to Yola, and do a reading for us,” she told me with all eagerness, as soon as she took a seat. She had the instruction to get Chimamanda to talk on phone to her professor back in Yola who sponsored her flight to Abuja . She later gave Chimamanda close follow-up until the author spoke with the American female professor on phone for more about fifteen minutes. What they agreed on would become public one of these days.
Meanwhile, more participants arrived, registered, and took their seats. I walked outside the hall to resolve an issue. That was when the white long vehicle arrived pulled into the centre. It was the type high-profiled singers like to cruise in, and it had a diplomatic number plate; It was from the American Embassy. I didn’t see her at first. Mallam Mohammed Sanni, Cultural Affairs Specialist drove the vehicle. Then I saw her, as she stepped out of the vehicle. “Our class prefect,” she said, in reference to the time I participated in her writing workshop (Farafina Trust) in Lagos last year. Okey stepped out too. “Okey, you didn’t say you would come,” I enthused. Much men’s laugher and back-slapping followed. Okey is the hardworking and capable PA/Admin. Officer of Farafina Trust. He is a large number of staff compacted into one. His job description could be, ‘anything that must be done.’ He did everything well when at that workshop. This was the first time I was seeing him in eight months.
We all walked into the hall for the workshop. One thing caught Chimamanda’s interest. “The quality of entries was high,” I had said. “Is that? Please, let me see them,” she said. That’s her. She loves seeing talent. It is what she wants to polish with the many promotions she gives literature in the first place. “You know I don’t do one day writing workshop,” she said to me, as we stood to a side of the hall. I had actually got her into that situation of having to take the workshop. She never thought one day is enough to impact effectively. “But I will use this workshop to test how well it works,” she said as we walked into the midst of the seated participants. “She doesn’t take one day creative writing workshop,” I announced to the group of 25 participants by way of introduction after she had taken her seat. “So I will like you to make the most of the time you will spend with her.” I stepped out of the scene after that, leaving her with her students.
“Tell me what you have been reading,” she said after everyone had introduced themselves. The response was diverse. It was funny too, sending all into rounds of laughter, making her smile much of the time. The 25 participants at the workshop had been selected from the responses to a call for submission. “I write what I like to read”; Watch out for clichés, both of language and of ideas - they are convenient but a lazy way of writing,” Chimamanda told her students while she took them through the whole circle of how to generate ideas on what to write, putting them on paper, vetting the work, and how to get a publisher. I got a plate of sweets to her table somewhere along the line, and to her delighted announcement of “Oh, sweets!” She immediately picked some. She had made it sound like it was more than that. The innocent and genuine appreciation of so little a thing was typical of her. I also made other plates of sweets and something to drink available to the Group of 25, before I stepped aside again. The workshop continued.
The reading materials she sent to me, to be forwarded to the Group of 25 ahead of the workshop were critiqued. That’s her style. She used the works of various established authors to treat various styles of writing as well as the issues and themes they write about. That generated a whole lot of debate ranging from the danger of one-story that paints a person, group or tribe in just one way. There was discussion on gender issues as a theme in writing. The subtlety of a narrative in building or dismantling important issues was looked into. By the time the workshop ended at 2 pm, the class had heard things that would shed fresh light on their writing. “I enjoyed the workshop”, she had said. Then she departed to get ready for the evening reading and book signing session.
It couldn’t have been less, the turn out for the reading. If the interest the announcement of her coming generated had been palpable, the attendance at her reading was something unprecedented. Nigerians and members of the diplomatic community had begun to arrive the venue long before 4 pm. That tells something. People like writers; Nigerians love their own. Chimamanda, the multiple award-winning writer is their own, and they came in droves, some to meet her for the first time, others to identify with her, and yet many to hear her voice of hope, of her vision for the nation’s literature. Something rang true about Nigeria’s famed hospitality on that occasion.
Some writers would have arrived the venue, twenty hours ahead of time even, going by the frequency with which the organizers had to respond on phone to queries about the event. Then she walked into the hall, smiling in her usual calm way. Heads turned, and necks craned as seated guests tried to get a glimpse of her. In a simple red dress, but surprisingly, without the trademark scarf on her head that could have been in any colour, she certainly had an image that no kid on the street of Abuja would miss. That, considering the good work the Re-branding Team has done, having displayed her picture for months on green cabs plying roads in the nation’s capital city. This is not to mention her image flashed regularly on TV, also by the same Team, where she is listed among Nigerians who are the nations’ positive face on the international stage. An attendee at the reading spelt this out for the diplomatic community in attendance: “People like Chimamanda should be considered as the image of the country before Nigerians are treated negatively abroad the way some nations do,” he had said much later in the event. There was a resounding applause for his observation.
The Master of Ceremony, Mallam Mohammed Sani, set things rolling. He called for opening remarks from different personalities, and introduction was made of literary bodies such as the Open Mic Forum whose members were present at the event. I had a simple task to execute, aside from ensuring that things worked in every other aspect - it was to introduce the Guest Writer. I almost missed it when the MC announced my name. I was outside the door, attending to an emergency when I heard him. I couldn’t finish as I had to rush in, drawing a squeezed paper out of my pocket. The paper was still squeezed when I took the microphone and read:
‘She grew up in Nsukka, in a house formerly occupied by the famous Nigerian writer, Pa Chinua Achebe. Her father, who is now retired, worked at the University of Nigeria , Nsukka. He was Nigeria 's first professor of statistics, and later Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University. Her mother was the first female registrar at the same institution. The person we talk about is out Guest Writer today - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Born on 15 September 1977 in Enugu, Nigeria, Chimamanda is the fifth of her parents’ six children.
She completed her secondary education at the University's school, and she received several academic prizes. She went on to study medicine and pharmacy at the University of Nigeria for a year and a half. During this period, she edited The Compass, a magazine run by the University's Catholic medical students. At the age of nineteen, she left for the United States . She gained a scholarship to study communication at Drexel University in Philadelphia for two years, and she went on to pursue a degree in communication and political science at Eastern Connecticut State University .
It was during her senior year at Eastern that she started working on her first novel, Purple Hibiscus. This book was released in October 2003 to wide critical acclaim: it was short listed for the Orange Fiction Prize (2004) and was awarded the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book (2005).
Her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun (also the title of one of her short stories), is set before and during the Biafran War. It was published in August 2006 in the United Kingdom and later in September 2006 in the United States. Like Purple Hibiscus, it has also been released in Nigeria .
Chimamanda was a Hodder fellow at Princeton University during the 2005-2006 academic year, and earned an MA in African Studies from Yale University in 2008. At the moment, she divides her time between Nigeria and the United States . Her collection of short stories, The Thing around Your Neck, was published in 2009. Chimamanda says her next major literary project will focus on the Nigerian immigrant experience in the United States . But here today, we have her all to ourselves – Nigeria ’s Queen of writers. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me by putting your hands together for Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.’
I handed the microphone over to her then, as she smiled and quietly remarked to me that I deserve something which I didn’t catch amidst the loud round of clapping for her. But she was brisk, being used to such things overseas where she had regularly promoted her books. She sat down to business. She read not from her latest book The Thing Around Your Neck, a collection of stories, which was made available (along with her other book) for buyers at the event, and which John Madera, a major published writer, had commended as “elegant evocations of family, loss, and sadness, albeit translated into a different milieu.” Rather she read an excerpt from a new work that is yet to be published. And it was Chimamanda in her usual self. There was Ucheka, the central in the story. She had a puritanical Christian background back in her village before she came to live with her aunt, Ifeoma, in Lagos . Unmarried, Ifeoma, was in a relationship and had a child for a married army general. For all the reasons Ifeoma entered the relationship with the general, she lost out. That was because the general was caught in an intrigue, and was later killed in an air crash - outcome of power play in high places. The general’s relatives subsequently packed all his belongings, effectively denying Ifeoma anything for herself and her child.
Those who listened to this Queen of writers, as she read her story would later point out variously: “There was this shocking effect from her description of some things at various points in the story”; “Her story had this graphic touch to it”. This is not surprising. The author is of the school of ‘show’ don’t ‘tell’, which is a fad in prose writing, really.
The question and answer time at the reading was a drama on its own – and it usually is, wherever this author who holds an MA from Yale University is on ‘hot seat.’ “I read your book Purple Hibiscus, and you appeared to me like you are fighting a battle,” actor, theatre director and consultant, Jide Zubeiru Attah, said when he had the opportunity to take the first shot. “But in Half of a Yellow Sun,” he continued, “you appeared subdued.” Adichie denied much of this. “I am not fighting a battle, what I write is the way I feel,” she said with reference to Attah’s perception that she had taken up the cause of women as against the main (male) character in Purple Hibiscus. And she had no apology for the way she felt about the things she wrote, as her usual candour came to the fore: “If people find my book offensive, they should put it aside and read something else.” She said. It was obvious many read this as a sign of humility. The clapping that accompanied it traveled round the hall.
“Seeing that you are a young woman, what propelled you to this level in such a short time?” was the question Dr Onuh, a director in the capital city administration asked. The response from the author was as informative as it was educative. She identified the fact of growing up on a university campus as important. She commended Nsuka campus, the environment, for the major impetus it gave her to take interest in scholarly pursuits. There, everything was around books, reading and all that was academic. There was the fact of having parents who worked in the same setting too. She has a professor of statistics and former Deputy Vice Chancellor of the University for a father, as well as the first female registrar of the same University as mother. “I have the most amazing, lovely parents,” Adichie said. Her parents gave room for questions. “We ask questions, seeking to answers to them.” And of course, “I made my choice.” The choice to write rather than continue with the one and half year of studying medicine and pharmacy that she had put in at the University of Nsukka, before she went to live with one of her relatives in the United States of America. She went on to study Communication at Drexel University , at which time she had begun to pen Purple Hibiscus which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book in 2005. When the question as to the importance of vision for her where writing was concerned was raised, she said, “the vision for writing is important, and, yes, I am somewhat obsessive about it,” recounting in some detail how she didn’t want to let go the manuscript of Half of A Yellow Sun as she had kept calling it back for “one more revision.”
As the Question and Answer session continued, issues of publishing and marketing of books got the author drawing out her daggers. To the complaints that being outside Nigeria may be an advantage in getting a publisher, she said, “I know a woman who is published recently in the U.S. , she wrote the book in Nigeria .” That rhymes with the position she usually took, “if you have done your work well, it will find a home (publisher).” She went on to state that there was something for everyone to do in the effort to overcome the challenges that confront writers. It was clear from her argument that she is one author who does not believe that writers should sit in a corner and complain about how the government or organization that sponsor literature did not do it well. She believes every writer must sit up and do something to correct whatever is wrong in the system. And there was an occasion when she had famously said, “we all throw papers on the street, then we complain that the street is dirty. If all of us in this hall will not throw paper wherever it pleases us, our cities will be clean.”
“What are we doing ourselves? These are important questions we need to attend to,” she had said at the Abuja reading.
And she had set out her own target. “I will like to go to primary schools all over the country.” That, as part of her effort to continue to promote literature by improving quality of writing as well as get people to read, even the younger ones. Tall dream. But a certain personality once remarked that a ‘vision is not big enough, until it shocks those that hear it.” Adichie’s is not only daring, it dares, sending out messages that she wants writers to sit up and take back the system back from anyone who may be sending it in the wrong direction. From her explanations about going to primary schools, it was obvious she envisioned younger generations raised as consumers of literature materials and who will be potential market for literature for adults when they grow up
But editors of big publishing houses have not been left out of her vision for literature in the country. Earlier this year, she organized a workshop for editors in an effort to improve the quality of reading materials that children in the nation are exposed to. “A newspaper may be all that a young child in a remote place is exposed to,” she argued, “and he may think that all the wrong styles of writing he finds in a newspaper is the best.” She was concerned that, not only newspapers but any badly edited work, has actually influenced a whole generation of young ones. And there is the generation of Nigerians who don’t read beyond what they need to get grades in examinations. “We must begin to brainwash Nigerians,” she announced. Her audience had made noises, indicating they were no comfortable with the word “brainwash”.. Not many quickly got wise to her idea of setting in motion a revolution that will change the whole facet of literature in the country. So she added, “in a good way,” to clarify her comment, which meant reorienting Nigerians with regard to reading and writing. Yet she had more to say in order to arrive home with her listeners. “If my dream of brainwashing comes true, we will change things.” That was a challenge, and more than that, a voice of encouragement, a hope, a dream. “We can do it in spite of our setbacks,” she had added, before she left the ‘hot seat.’ Then the book signing session commenced with a long queue and people waited patiently for their turn of getting autographed copies and also to take pictures with Chimamanda.
The dinner hosted in her honour kicked off at 7 pm. I had decided to go in full national costume, but later decided to cut down on it a little. “I will have to leave my agbada, flowing outer robe, behind,” I had grumbled to Dr Emman Shehu. “You won’t wear agbada, and I don’t want to go there and look like I am the one being hosted,” I added. I made do with just buba and sokoto, and a blue cap. “This cap is good,” Chimamada said, when she arrived and we posed for a photograph together. She has always been an admirer of good traditional dressing style. Jekwu, a fellow participant at her 2009 workshop, and who would appeared in class in full Igbo dressing with beads to match, came to my mind when she said that. Jekwu had wowed Chimamanda on that occasion with his stylish dressing.
The dinner had in attendance personalities such as NTA’s Eugenia Abu, Ozioma Izuorah, Araceli Aipoh, Lady Giesere Dorgu, Alhaji Abubakar Gimba, Dr Emman Usman Shehu, Victoria Sloan, Elnathan John, Okey Adichie, Ken Ike, Dr Kabura Zakama, Judith Rapu, Abiathar Zadok and Halima Sekula; and some foreign dignitaries. I was introduced to a handful of people myself. Chimamanda had said, “you don’t know Oge; she is my cousin and she lives here in Abuja .” Oge is a beauty, and a banker, and full of smiles. I had bored her with talks about writing which she doesn’t do, by the time Chimamanda came over and told us to come along and attend to meal matters. “I am getting to know your cousin, now you said we should come for food,” I had accused. Chimamanda only laughed, delivered a light slap on my shoulder, and left me and her cousin alone.
“Do you have apu and vegetable?” I had asked those who attended to the giant bowls of food stacked in a corner. “Everything is continental, sir,” I was told. I didn’t hide my disappointment, and so I placed things that would not make me uncomfortable later, in my plate.
General discussion in the course of the night had been around everything and anything. Chimamanda and Elnathan and Ozioma and Dr Shehu and Dr Kabura Zakama must have talked books and writing, I am not so sure, because I was far away from them. I was with Okey and Oge much of the time, and got to overhear some highly intellectual discussion in the group close by consisting of Peter Claussen, Alhaji Gimba, Ken Ike, Zadok, Aipoh and Eugenia Abu. Claussen, the host moved around much, and he engaged his guests in different discussions. He appeared to me as a man of the art, one with deep outlook on diverse issues, and he would later address all, encouraging us to make our words, which is all we have as writers, count in the society. “This is what I want you to take away,” he said before his guests began to depart. He was at the door though, and he personally said goodbye – with a handshake, his call card, and a copy of Chimamanda’s The Thing Around Your Neck.
It was day and an evening day of activities for Nigeria ’s Queen of writers, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. But it was a day well spent, and it will be well-remembered for a long time to come.
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