Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Nigeria in 1977. She is from Abba, in Anambra State, but grew up in the university town of Nsukka where she attended primary and secondary schools and briefly studied Medicine and Pharmacy. She then moved to the United States to attend college, graduating summa cum laude from Eastern Connecticut State with a major in Communication and a minor in Political Science. She holds a Masters degree in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins and a Masters degree in African Studies from Yale.
She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), and she has recently published a collection of short stories titled The Thing around Your Neck (2009). She has received numerous awards and distinctions, including the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (2007) and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2008).
Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
"And the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story." "The consequence of the single story is this: It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar."
"Of course, Africa is a continent full of catastrophes. There are immense ones, such as the horrific rapes in Congo. And depressing ones, such as the fact that 5,000 people apply for one job vacancy in Nigeria. But there are other stories that are not about catastrophe. And it is very important, it is just as important, to talk about them."
TEXT SOURCES AND FOR MORE INFORMATION
http://www.halfofayellowsun.com/
http://www.l3.ulg.ac.be/adichie/index.html
http://www.ted.com chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html
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