Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the cover star for TW Magazine‘s April 2018 Issue.
Looking dazzling in green chiffon and flower embellishments, the bestselling author, looked the perfect combination of motherhood, career and passion.
In this edition of TW Magazine, Adichie talks about family, sisterhood and true feminism.
On Writing…
1. “My writing advice is read, read, read: you don’t have to like what you read but it demystifies writing.”
2. “Write. Just write. Start. And read as much as you can. Read widely and read different things, and sometimes while immersed in the multitude voices of others, you just might find your own. ”
3. “If you are finding the writing process tough, take a break and eat some chocolate.”
On Gender…
4. “Of course I am not worried about intimidating men. The type of man who will be intimidated by me is exactly the type of man I have no interest in.”
5. “Show a people as one thing, only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.”
6. “Write television shows in which female strength is not depicted as remarkable but merely normal. Teach your students to see that vulnerability is a HUMAN rather than a FEMALE trait.”
On Africa…
“If I were not African, I wonder whether it would be clear to me that Africa is a place where the people do not need limp gifts of fish but sturdy fishing rods and fair access to the pond. I wonder whether I would realize that while African nations have a failure of leadership, they also have dynamic people with agency and voices.”
8. “I recently spoke at a university where a student told me it was such a shame that Nigerian men were physical abusers like the father character in my novel. I told him that I had recently read a novel called American Psycho, and that it was a shame that young Americans were serial murderers.”
9. “You have to do more than go there and adopt a child or show us pictures of children with flies in their eyes. That simplifies Africa.”
10 “Because of writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye … I realized that people like me, girls with skin the color of chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form ponytails, could also exist in literature.”
On Love
10. “Please do not twist yourself into shapes to please. Don’t do it. If someone likes that version of you, that version of you that is false and holds back, then they actually just like that twisted shape, and not you. And the world is such a gloriously multifaceted, diverse place that there are people in the world who will like you, the real you, as you are.”
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