Despite the fact that I grew up reading, admiring and loving Anglo-Saxon or American writers like Sinclair Lewis, Theodore Dreiser, Phillip Roth, Saul Bellow,and Britain’ s Graham Greene, and American journalists Pete Hamill Jimmy Breslin, she, a Nigerian-American is my favorite writer today.
She writes just as well (or better) than the above icons and speaks better English than most native English speaker (including myself).
And like another fine writer (whose father was a tailor), Gay Talese, she pays special attention to how she eloquently dresses in unique African garb.
In fact, the three times I met her this past weekend here in Rio de Janeiro during the Bienal Book fair and a “Light in Education” (LED) she was attired in three unique African garments adding to her beauty as a Nigerian princess.
She goes by the shorter names of Adichie but her full name is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,47, and she is described as a superstar of today´s literature.
Others compare her to the American singer-composer and actress Beyonce and her speech “We should all be Feminists” is featured in Beyonce´s musical video clip called Flawless.
Adichie has opened new worlds to me, or a world I have forgotten since I resided and worked over fifty years ago in South Africa. Her novels have shed light on the Africa and African I had not known: the rich, upper class, well-educated who have resided and studied in the USA and the UK.
So far, I have read two of her extremely well-written novels “Half of Yellow Sun” (2006), “a haunting story of love and war” portraying Nigerian Biafra war from the view Ugwu , of the Igbo tribe (a segment of Nigerians) and her current “Dream Count,” (translated locally into Portuguese by the publisher Companhia das Letras):the love stories of four African (three Nigerians) and one Guinean woman who reside in the USA, or shuttle between Nigeria and the USA.
” If men would read more and learn about the lives of others in different cultures we might have less wars,” Adichie , Nigerian born author.
As the author emphasized during her weekend in Rio de Janeiro, these stories (including one based on a Guinean hotel maid who was raped by a French semi- diplomat, the Managing Director of the Intl Monetária Fund in New York) may feature Africans but are about women of any color, race or creed.
Getting closer to my favorite author, I asked her at the Rio Bienal bookfair if in light of the crackdown on immigrants by President Trump´s ruthless Ice police, she would have modified “Dream Count.”
Adichie denied she would change a line.
But in other comments during her visit here, Adichie criticized Trump II´s crackdowns and authorities “reminding me of the way many African dictators have acted.”
In a past interview with BBC the author, who resides and teaches in Maryland when not shuttling off to Nigeria to teach writing workshops. noted that the USA and Nigeria; have many similarities.
“Nigeria has wonderful people but awful governments,” she told crowds gathered to meet her at the Bienal and LeD.
Without going into more of Adichie´s statements including” writing is not my profession but vocation …. I started off studying (like Somerset Maugham) medicine but gave it up after 18 months to study other things in the USA,” this observer was impressed by the homage she received by local Afro-Brazilians dancing and singing in her honor as if she was some African Cleopatra.
“I was shocked when I discovered how much of Brazil is of African heritage (56.1 per cent or 20.7 million), Adichie noted and “feel right at home in Brazil.”
Hopefully Adichie will continue authoring insightful novels, shedding new light on cultures and peoples we know little about.
But becoming a superstar in the USA often ruins great talents as they are so busy enjoying fame and fortune, they have less time to devote to their art.
Hopefully this will not be the case with my favorite author.