Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of Americanah. Image courtesy of http://www.interviewmagazine.com/files/2013/05/13/img-chimamanda-adichie_173927396968.jpg
This week, Penn State has had the privilege of hosting one of the biggest names in modern literature, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Adichie, author of Americanah, the Penn State Reads summer reading book for all incoming freshmen, came to speak yesterday with a group of students in the Atherton Grandfather Clock Lounge. She discussed everything from writing Americanah to her personal motivations for writing and her advocacy of feminism.
Excerpt from Adichie’s TED talk, “We Should All Be Feminists” Image courtesy of http://media-cache-cd0.pinimg.com/236x/80/b2/5f/80b25ff463d18b485d0d1d07fa8879d4.jpg
Having watched her TED talks about feminism and the danger of a single story, I knew that Adichie could tell a good story, but in meeting her yesterday, I realized that she is more than a storyteller. She is nothing short of a revolutionary. In every situation, she challenged us to take a different perspective and consider life in another person’s shoes. During the session, she openly invited men to take part in the feminist movement and challenged Americans and international students alike to consider the struggles of race, class, and gender in the context of different cultures.
Cover art for Americanah. Image courtesy of http://chimamanda.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/americanah.png
One of her most compelling points was the argument that humans are more likely to pay attention to the struggles in which they are at a disadvantage. For Adichie, she finds herself dealing with the issues of race and gender more often than class because she is privileged in class as a public figure. Personally, I see this issue in my own life as the gender struggle seems more prevalent than those of race or class. With this in mind, how can we possibly expect to fix these problems if only a small subset of the entire population is actively working to fix these issues? We need participation from the population at large, but how can we begin to actively involve everyone? With discriminations as deep-seated as those of race, class, and gender, it’s going to take everyone to enact major changes in society.