“Never ever accept ‘Because You Are A Woman’ as a reason for doing or not doing anything.”

-Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is one of the most noteable writers of the modern day. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus (2003), Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions (2017) and Americanah (2013), the short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck (2009), and the book-length essay We Should All Be Feminists (2014). The memoir about the death of her father is anticipated to be published on May 11th of this year.

Her novel Purple Hibiscus won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Half of a Yellow Sun, won the Orange Prize, was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist and a New York Times Notable Book. Her recognition continues with Americanah, her novel that won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named one of The New York Times Top Ten Best Books of 2013. (Checkout her recommended reads for Black History Month!)

Adichie grew up in Nigeria and currently works between Nigeria and the United States as a recent recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, which is a $625,000, five-year grant, no-strings-attached award given to extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential. 

She is one of six children to her Igbo parents. Her father, James Nwoye Adichie worked at the University of Nigeria and was Nigeria's first professor of statistics. He later became Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University and her mother was the first female registrar at the same institution.

Her post-secondary education was followed by her attendance at the University of Nigeria where she studied medicine and pharmacy for a year and a half. During this time, she edited the magazine, The Compass, which was ran by the University's Catholic medical students.

She moved to the U.S. at age 19 after gaining a scholarship to study communication at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Adichie continued to pursue a degree in communication and political science at Eastern Connecticut State University, where she graduated summa cum laude from in 2001. Following this, she graduated from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore with a master’s degree in creative writing.

She is also the author of the viral TED Talk, “We Should All Be Feminists,”some of which was sampled in Beyoncé’s music. She has been featured in a multiple interviews where she discusses topics ranging from feminism to fashion. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is more than an author, she has been a voice and a leader of discussions that are important and critical for shaping the 21st century.