Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Another one, most favoured by many, and by me; so elegant her prose, so singular her voice. And, here is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie now, with three quite different pieces of writing, but all seeped with ideas about belonging – to family, to nation; about losing – those we love, freedoms taken for granted; and about fickle power – as a tool to control or to set one free. All are recent, very recent, very contemporaneous in style and subject and intent.
Firstly, Zikora. As modest a work as it is in terms of length, so wide its sociological and psychological scope; and all displayed in the compact first person narrative of a successful professional Nigerian woman, Zikora, about to give birth surrounded by the cool accoutrements of western medicine. At her side, the mother who she does not know how to please, and in the conspicuous absence of a partner, Kwame, deemed “perfect” and then to do “a runner”, and from whom she struggles to let go, and all the while reflecting upon her complicated Nigerian family and their complicated relationships, the awkwardness of her place as an African woman in the United States where her Blackness is always writ large. And, in the end, wondering herself why she persisted in forgiving the men who did her wrong – Kwame was not the first, and then there is the father who had deserted her mother (and her) and started another family, but whose attention she still craved. And when it is over, a new life brought into the world, a realisation is in the dawning that just as her thoughts flew to Lagos and her impossible family, it is alone her mother who has flown to her; her difficult, impossible to please mother who never left her and was with her now.
Interesting, in another respect, is that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has chosen to publish this through Amazon. I dare say this will not impress some, but it does actually make sense for a “small” work at a small price that she would have wanted to make available to as many people as possible.
For so many, in so many places, these times demand that we reflect upon grief, real and imagined. In The New Yorker, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie writes of that which was very real, and with which she was overwhelmed on the death of her father in Nigeria in June this year. With words of love and respect, imbued with an almost tangible sorrow, she erects a memorial to her father and that man we learn to be Prof. James Nwoye Adichie, and then generously shares him with us. The vivid snapshots out of his life, and a life in his company, family bonds that transcend generations and oceans, all reverberate so much with life that death and its absoluteness, though not forgotten, is relegated to the shadows. We can not presume to share in a daughter’s grief, nor that of her family, but Ms. Adichie’s essay gets to that very essence of grief that is particular, individually experienced, to a greater reception of an emotion inherent to the human condition. Entitled “Notes on Grief”, there are loud and quiet reminders here of grieving as an act of grace, lament as the beginning of memory. A truly beautiful piece of writing.
A cautionary tale, too, for those tempted to mix the real life of writers with their fictional work – to all intents and purposes Prof. Adichie is about as far removed from the self-centred, demanding patriarch who is Zikora’s father as one come imagine!
And finally, and this truly surprised me, this first review for the first part of Barack Obamas presidential memoir, A Promised Land, at The New York Times. Not everyone would be willing to offer up the hours to read about a lot of politicking and then to speak, or more precisely, write upon it. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie does so. Recognising a thoroughly decent man (with such men has she knowledge – see above!), she is admiring of President Obama’s considerable talents, as a world leader and as a writer, but she also misses some greater emotional depth – true to form, it seems, he will not let us in – and is irritated by his tendency to understate his achievements and reflect upon his own perceived shortcomings. She is particularly critical of what she thinks to be a willingness to conflate race and class, his intellectualisation of “race” – making it more complex than it is, a reluctance to offend with a sweeping brush.
This is a long piece, and Ms. Adichie was clearly not daunted by the wonky aspects, and that is encouraging, for I had almost convinced myself to remain unbowed by the hype for a while! This review though suggests a way of reading critically the memoirist, Obama, who is, as she says: “…a man watching himself watch himself…”. Once removed too many, as that may be, this is the book that only he could write, and perhaps the only book he could write, and should be read for what it has to say about a very particular time in United States history, when, as Adichie says, “…America changed while also remaining unchanged.” Volume two is to follow, and will be awaited just as impatiently, but it may well be up to another to uncover this very complicated man.
Whatever, the coolest President there ever has been, though he may exasperate, does not leave Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie cold, nor do I expect will he me.