Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Template:Short description Template:Good article Template:Use Nigerian English Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox person Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieTemplate:Efn (born Grace Ngozi Adichie;<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 15 September 1977) is a Nigerian author. She has written four novels, two collections of short stories, one memoir, and many articles and short stories for newspapers, magazines, and periodicals. She is widely regarded as a central figure in postcolonial feminist literature.

Born into an Igbo family in Enugu, Nigeria, Adichie was educated at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka, where she studied medicine for a year and half. She left Nigeria at the age of 19 to study in the United States at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and went on to study at a further three universities in the U.S.: Eastern Connecticut State University, Johns Hopkins University, and Yale University.

Many of Adichie's novels are set in Nsukka, where she grew up. She started writing during her university education. She first wrote Decisions (1997), a poetry collection, followed by a play, For Love of Biafra (1998). She achieved early success with her debut novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003). Adichie has written many works including novels, Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), Americanah (2013), and Dream Count (2025); essay collections, We Should All Be Feminists (2014) and Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions (2017); a memoir, Notes on Grief (2021); and a children's book, Mama's Sleeping Scarf (2023). She has cited Chinua Achebe and Buchi Emecheta as inspirations, and Adichie's writing style juxtaposes Western and African influences, with particular influence from Igbo culture. Most of her works explore the themes of religion, immigration, gender and culture.

Adichie uses fashion as a medium to break down stereotypes, and in 2018 was recognised with a Shorty Award for her "Wear Nigerian Campaign". She has a successful speaking career: her 2009 TED Talk "The Danger of a Single Story" is one of the most viewed TED Talks; her 2012 talk, "We Should All Be Feminists", was sampled by American singer Beyoncé, as well as being featured on a T-shirt by Dior in 2016. Adichie's awards and honours include academic and literary prizes, fellowships, grants, honorary degrees, and other high recognition, such as a MacArthur Fellowship in 2008 and induction into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017.

Early life and careerEdit

Early lifeEdit

Adichie, whose English name was Amanda,Template:Sfn Template:Sfn was born on 15 September 1977, and raised in Enugu, Nigeria, as the fifth out of six children to Igbo parents, Grace Odigwe and James Nwoye Adichie.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Template:Sfn She made up the name "Chimamanda" in the 1990s to keep her legal English name of "Amanda" and conform with Igbo Christian naming customs of the time.Template:Efn Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Adichie's father was born in Abba, Anambra State, and studied mathematics at University College, Ibadan, until his graduation in 1957. James married Grace on 15 April 1963,Template:Sfn and moved with her to Berkeley, California, to complete his PhD at the University of California.Template:Sfn While in the United States, the couple had two daughters, ljeoma Rosemary and Uchenna.Template:Sfn He returned to Nigeria and began working as a professor at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka in 1966.Template:Sfn Her mother was born in Umunnachi, Anambra State.Template:Sfn Grace began her university studies in 1964, at Merritt College in Oakland, California, and then later earned a degree in sociology and anthropology from the University of Nigeria.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn

The Biafran War broke out in 1967 and James started working for the Biafran governmentTemplate:Sfn at the Biafran Manpower Directorate.Template:Sfn Adichie lost her maternal and paternal grandfathers.Template:Sfn After Biafra ceased to exist in 1970, her father returned to the University of Nigeria,Template:Sfn Template:Sfn while her mother worked for the government at Enugu until 1973, before becoming an administration officer at the University of Nigeria, and later the first female registrar.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Adichie stayed at the campus of the University of Nigeria, previously occupied by Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe.Template:Sfn Her siblings include Ijeoma Rosemary, Uchenna "Uche", Chukwunweike "Chuks", Okechukwu "Okey", and Kenechukwu "Kene".Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Adichie was Catholic,Template:Sfn and her family's home parish was St. Paul's Parish in Abba.Template:Sfn Adichie's father died of kidney failure in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic,Template:Sfn and her mother died in 2021.Template:Sfn

As a child, Adichie read only English-language stories,Template:Sfn especially by Enid Blyton. Adichie's juvenilia included stories with characters who were white and blue-eyed, modeled on British children she had read about.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Template:Sfn At the age of 10, she discovered African literature and read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe,Template:Sfn The African Child by Camara Laye,Template:Sfn Weep Not, Child by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, and Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta.Template:Sfn Adichie began to study her father's stories about Biafra when she was 13 years old. On visits to Abba, she saw houses that were destroyed and rusty bullets scattered on the ground. She would later incorporate these memories and her father's accounts into her novels.Template:Sfn

In her formal education, Adichie was taught in both Igbo and English.Template:Sfn Although Igbo was not a popular subject, she continued taking courses in the language throughout high school.Template:Sfn She completed her secondary education at the University of Nigeria Campus Secondary School, with top distinction in the West African Examinations Council (WAEC),Template:Sfn and academic prizes.Template:Sfn She was admitted to the University of Nigeria, where she studied medicine and pharmacy for a year and half.Template:Sfn She was also the editor of The Compass, a student-run university magazine.Template:Sfn In 1997, at the age of 19, Adichie published Decisions, a collection of poems, and later moved to the United States,Template:Sfn to study communications at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn In 1998, she wrote a play called For Love of Biafra, which was her initial exploration of the theme of war.Template:Sfn These early works were written under the name Amanda N. Adichie.Template:Sfn

Two years after moving to the United States, she transferred to Eastern Connecticut State University in Willimantic, Connecticut, living with her sister Ijeoma, who was a medical doctor there.Template:Sfn In 2000, Adichie published her short story "My Mother, the Crazy African",Template:Sfn which discusses the problems that arise when a person is facing two cultures that are complete opposites from each other.Template:Sfn After finishing her undergraduate degree, she continued studying and simultaneously pursuing a writing career.Template:Sfn While a senior at Eastern Connecticut, she wrote articles for the university paper Campus Lantern.Template:Sfn She received her bachelor's degree summa cum laude with a major in political science and a minor in communications in 2001.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn She earned a master's degree in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University in 2003,Template:Sfn Template:Sfn and for the next two years was a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, where she taught introductory fiction.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn She began studying at Yale University, and completed a second master's degree in African studies in 2008.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Adichie received a MacArthur Fellowship that same year,Template:Sfn plus other academic prizes, including the 2011–2012 Fellowship of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.Template:Sfn

In 2009, Adichie married Nigerian doctor Ivara Esege.Template:Sfn The couple has three children; their daughter was born in 2016,Template:Sfn and twin boys in 2024, as Adichie revealed in an interview with British newspaper The Guardian.Template:Sf The latter offspring were carried by a surrogate.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The family primarily lives in the US, where Adichie has Nigerian nationality and permanent resident status,Template:Sfn but also maintains a home in Nigeria.Template:Sfn

Literary careerEdit

While studying in the US, Adichie started researching and writing her first novel, Purple Hibiscus. She wrote it during a period of homesickness and set it in her childhood home of Nsukka.Template:Sfn The book explores post-colonial Nigeria during a military coup d'état and examines the cultural conflicts between Christianity and Igbo traditions within the dynamics and generations of a family, touching on themes of class, gender, race, and violence.Template:Sfn She sent her manuscript to publishing houses and literary agents, who either rejected it or requested that she change the setting from Africa to America, so as to make it more familiar to a broader range of readers. Eventually, Djana Pearson Morris, a literary agent working at Pearson Morris and Belt Literary Management, accepted the manuscript.Template:Sfn Morris recognised that marketing would be challenging, since Adichie was Black but neither African-American nor Caribbean. Morris submitted it to potential publishers until it was eventually accepted by Algonquin Books, a small independent company, in 2003.Template:Sfn Algonquin created support for the book by providing advance copies to booksellers, reviewers, and media houses. They also sponsored Adichie on a promotional tourTemplate:Sfn and sent the manuscript to Fourth Estate, who accepted the book for publication in the United Kingdom in 2004.Template:Sfn Adichie hired the agent Sarah Chalfant of the Wylie Agency to represent her. The book was published by Kachifo Limited in Nigeria in 2004,Template:Sfn and subsequently translated into more than forty languages.Template:Sfn

File:Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at a signing in Berlin, Germany on 16 May 2014 (cropped).jpg

Adichie at the reading and signing of her work Americanah in Berlin, Germany (2014)

After her first book, Adichie began writing Half of a Yellow Sun, on which she worked for four years, researching extensively and studying her father's memories of the period and Buchi Emecheta Template:`s 1982 novel Destination Biafra.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Half of a Yellow Sun was first published in 2006 by Anchor Books, a trade-paperback imprint of Alfred A. Knopf, who also released the book later under its Vintage Canada label. The novel was also published in France as {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} in 2008, by Éditions Gallimard.Template:Sfn Half of a Yellow Sun expands on the Biafran conflict, weaving together a love story that includes people from various regions and social classes of Nigeria, and how the war and encounters with refugees changes them.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn

While completing her Hodder and MacArthur fellowships, Adichie published short stories in various magazines.Template:Sfn Twelve of these stories were collected in her third book, The Thing Around Your Neck, published by Knopf in 2009.Template:Sfn The stories focus on the experiences of Nigerian women, living at home or abroad, examining the tragedies, loneliness, and feelings of displacement that result from their marriages, relocations, or violent events.Template:Sfn The Thing Around Your Neck was a bridge between Africa and the African diaspora, which was also the theme of her fourth book, Americanah, published in 2013.Template:Sfn It was the story of a young Nigerian woman and her male schoolmate, who had not studied the trans-Atlantic slave trade in school and had no understanding of the racism associated with being Black in the United States or class structures in the United Kingdom.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn It explores the central message of a "shared Black consciousness", as both of the characters – one in Britain and the other in America – experience a loss of identity when they try to navigate their lives abroad.Template:Sfn

Adichie was invited to be a visiting writer at the University of Michigan on the Flint campus in 2014. The Renowned African Writers/African and African Diaspora Artists Visit Series required her to engage with students and teachers from high schools and universities, patrons of the local public library, and the community at large in forums, workshops, and lectures that discussed Purple Hibiscus, Americanah, and her personal writing experiences. Clips from her talks "The Danger of a Single Story" and "We Should All Be Feminists" were also aired at some of the events and discussed in the question-and-answer segment following her varied presentations.Template:Sfn In 2015, Adichie wrote a letter to a friend and posted it on Facebook in 2016. Comments on the post convinced her to turn to a book,Template:Sfn Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, which was an expansion of her ideas on how to raise a feminist daughter. The book was published in 2017.Template:Sfn In 2020, Adichie published "Zikora", a stand-alone short story about sexism and single motherhood,Template:Sfn and an essay "Notes on Grief" in The New Yorker, after her father's death. She expanded the essay into a book of the same name that was published by Fourth Estate the following year.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn

In 2020, Adichie adapted and published We Should All Be Feminists in an edition for children, illustrated by Leire Salaberria.Template:Sfn Translations of it were authorised for publication in Croatian, French, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish.Template:Sfn Adichie spent a year and a half working on her first children's book, Mama's Sleeping Scarf, which was written in 2019, and was published in 2023 by HarperCollins under the pseudonym Nwa Grace James.Template:Efn Template:Sfn Illustrations for the book were by Joelle Avelino, a Congolese-Angolan illustrator.Template:Sfn The book tells the story of the connections of generations through family interactions with a head scarf.Template:Sfn In 2025, Adichie published Dream Count, her first novel in 12 years.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

StyleEdit

Adichie uses both Igbo and English in her works,Template:Sfn with Igbo phrases shown in italics and then, followed by the English translation.Template:Sfn She uses metaphors to trigger sensory experiences,Template:Sfn for example, the arrival of a king to challenge colonial and religious leaders in Purple Hibiscus symbolises Palm Sunday.Template:Sfn Her use of language referencing Achebe's Things Fall Apart invokes the memories of his work to her readers.Template:Sfn Similarly, the name of Kambili, a character in Purple Hibiscus, evokes "{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}" ("Live and Let Live"), the title of a song by Igbo musician Oliver De Coque.Template:Sfn To describe pre- and post-war conditions, she moves from good to worse as seen in Half of a Yellow Sun, in which one of her characters begins by opening the refrigerator and sees oranges, beer, and a "roasted shimmering chicken". These contrast to later in the novel where one of her characters dies of starvation, and others are forced to eat powdered eggs and lizards.Template:Sfn Adichie usually uses real places and historic figures to draw readers into her stories.Template:Sfn

In developing characters, Adichie often exaggerates attitudes to contrast the differences between traditional and western cultures.Template:Sfn Her stories often point out failed cultures, particularly those which leave her characters in a limbo between bad options.Template:Sfn At times, she creates a character as an oversimplified archetype of a particular aspect of cultural behavior to create a foil for a more complex character.Template:Sfn

Igbo traditionEdit

Adichie gives her characters recognisable common names for an intended ethnicity, such as Mohammed for a Muslim character.Template:Sfn For Igbo characters, she invents names that convey Igbo naming traditions and depict the character's traits, personality, and social connections.Template:Sfn For example, in Half of a Yellow Sun, the character's name Ọlanna literally means "God's Gold", but Nwankwọ points out that {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} means precious and {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} means father (which can be understood as either God the father or a parent).Template:Sfn By shunning popular Igbo names, Adichie intentionally imbues her characters with multi-ethnic, gender-plural, global personas.Template:Sfn She typically does not use English names for African characters but, when she does, it is a device to represent negative traits or behaviours.Template:Sfn

Adichie draws on figures from Igbo oral tradition to present facts in the style of historical fiction.Template:Sfn She breaks with tradition in a way that contrasts with traditional African literature, given that women writers were often absent from the Nigerian literary canon,Template:Sfn and female characters were often overlooked or served as supporting material for male characters who were engaged in the socio-political and economic life of the community.Template:Sfn Her style often focuses on strong women and adds a gendered perspective to topics previously explored by other authors, such as colonialism, religion, and power relationships.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn

Adichie often separates characters into social classes to illustrate social ambiguities and traditional hierarchies.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn By using narratives from characters of different segments of society, as she reiterates in her TED talk, "The Danger of a Single Story", she conveys the message that there is no single truth about the past.Template:Sfn Adichie is encouraging her readers to recognise their own responsibility to one another, and the injustice that exists in the world.Template:Sfn Nigerian scholar Stanley Ordu classifies Adichie's feminism as womanist because her analysis of patriarchal systems goes beyond sexist treatment of women and anti-male bias, looking instead at socio-economic, political and racial struggles women face to survive and cooperate with men.Template:Sfn For example, in Purple Hibiscus, the character Auntie Ifeoma embodies a womanist view through making all family members to work as a team and with consensus, so that each person's talents are utilised to their highest potential.Template:Sfn

In both her written works and public speaking, Adichie incorporates humour, and uses anecdotes, irony and satire to underscore a particular point of view.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Adichie has increasingly developed a contemporary Pan-Africanist view of gender issues, becoming less interested in the way the West sees Africa and more interested in how Africa sees itself.Template:Sfn

ThemesEdit

Adichie, in a 2011 conversation with Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina, stated that the overriding theme of her works was love.Template:Sfn Using the feminist argument "The personal is political", love in her works is typically expressed through cultural identity, personal identity and the human condition, and how social and political conflict impact all three.Template:Sfn Adichie frequently explores the intersections of class, culture, gender, (post-)imperialism, power, race and religion.Template:Sfn Struggle is a predominant theme throughout African literature,Template:Sfn and her works follow that tradition by examining families, communities, and relationships.Template:Sfn Her explorations go beyond political strife and the struggle for rights, and typically examine what it is to be human.Template:Sfn Many of her writings deal with the way her characters reconcile themselves with trauma in their livesTemplate:Sfn and how they move from being silenced and voiceless to self-empowered and able to tell their own stories.Template:Sfn

Adichie's works, beginning with Purple Hibiscus, generally examine cultural identity.Template:Sfn Igbo identity is typically at the forefront of her works, which celebrate Igbo language and culture, and African patriotism, in general.Template:Sfn Her writing is an intentional dialogue with the West, intent on reclaiming African dignity and humanity.Template:Sfn A recurring theme in Adichie's works is the Biafran War. The civil war was a "defining moment" in the post-colonial history of Nigeria, and examining the conflict dramatises the way in which the country's identity was shaped. Half of a Yellow Sun, her major work on the war, highlights how policies, corruption, religious dogmatism and strife played into the expulsion of the Igbo population and then forced their reintegration into the nation.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Both actions had consequences, and Adichie presents the war as an unhealed wound because of political leaders' reluctance to address the issues that sparked it.Template:Sfn

The University of Nigeria, Nsukka reappears in Adichie's novels to illustrate the transformative nature of education in developing political consciousness, and symbolises the stimulation of Pan-African consciousness and a desire for independence in Half of a Yellow Sun. It appeared in both Purple Hibiscus and Americanah as the site of resistance to authoritarian rule through civil disobedience and dissent by students.Template:Sfn The university teaches the colonial accounts of history and develops the means to contest its distortions through indigenous knowledge,Template:Sfn by recognising that colonial literature tells only part of the story and minimises African contributions.Template:Sfn Adichie illustrates this in Half of a Yellow Sun, when mathematics instructor {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, explains to his houseboy, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, that he will learn in school that the Niger River was discovered by a white man named Mungo Park, although the indigenous people had fished the river for generations. However, Odenigbo cautions Ugwu that, even though the story of Park's discovery is false, he must use the wrong answer or he will fail his exam.Template:Sfn

Adichie's works about African diaspora consistently examine themes of belonging, adaptation and discrimination.Template:Sfn This is often shown as an obsession to assimilate and is demonstrated by characters changing their names,Template:Sfn a common theme in Adiche's short fiction, which serves to point out hypocrisy.Template:Sfn By using the theme of immigration, she is able to develop dialogue on how her characters' perceptions and identity are changed by living abroad and encountering different cultural norms.Template:Sfn Initially alienated by the customs and traditions of a new place, the characters, such as Ifemelu in Americanah, eventually discover ways to connect with new communities.Template:Sfn Ifemelu's connections are made through self-exploration, which, rather than leading to assimilating into her new culture, lead her to a heightened awareness of being part of the African diaspora,Template:Sfn and adoption of a dual perspective that reshapes and transforms her sense of self.Template:Sfn Awareness of Blackness as part of identity, initially a foreign concept to Africans upon arriving in the United States,Template:Sfn is shown not only in those works, but also in her feminist tract, Dear Ijeawele or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions. In it, she evaluates themes of identity that recur in Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun, and The Thing Around Your Neck such as stereotypical perceptions of Black women's physical appearance, their hair and their objectification.Template:Sfn Dear Ijeawele stresses the political importance of using African names,Template:Sfn rejecting colorism,Template:Sfn exercising freedom of expression in how they wear their hair (including rejecting patronising curiosity about it)Template:Sfn and avoiding commodification, such as marriageability tests, which reduce a woman's worth to that of a prize, seeing only her value as a man's wife.Template:Sfn Her women characters repeatedly resist being defined by stereotypes and embody a quest for women's empowerment.Template:Sfn

Adichie's works often deal with inter-generational explorations of family units, allowing her to examine differing experiences of oppression and liberation. In both Purple Hibiscus and "The Headstrong Historian"—one of the stories included in The Thing Around Your Neck—Adichie examined these themes using the family as a miniature representation of violence.Template:Sfn Female sexuality, both within patriarchal marriage relationships and outside of marriage, is a theme that Adichie typically uses to explore romantic complexities and boundaries. Her work discusses homosexuality in the context of marital affairs in stories such as "Transition to Glory", and taboo topics such as romantic feelings for clergy in Purple Hibiscus, as well as the seduction of a friend's boyfriend in "Light Skin". Miscarriage,Template:Sfn motherhood and the struggles of womanhood are recurring themes in Adichie's works, and are often examined in relation to Christianity, patriarchy, and social expectation.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Template:Sfn For example, in the short story "Zikora", she deals with the interlocking biological, cultural and political aspects of becoming a mother and expectations placed upon women.Template:Sfn The story examines the failure of contraception and an unexpected pregnancy, abandonment by her partner, single motherhood, social pressure and Zikora's identity crisis, and the various emotions she experiences about becoming a mother.Template:Sfn

Adichie's works show a deep interest in the complexities of the human condition. Recurrent themes are forgiveness and betrayal, as in Half of a Yellow Sun, when Olanna forgives her lover's infidelity, or Ifemelu's decision to separate from her boyfriend in Americanah.Template:Sfn Adichie's examination of war shines a light on how both sides of any conflict commit atrocities and neither side is blameless for the unfolding violence. Her narrative demonstrates that knowledge and understanding of diverse classes and ethnic groups is necessary to create harmonious multi-ethnic communities.Template:Sfn Other forms of violence—including sexual abuse, rape, domestic abuse, and rage—are repeated themes in Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun and the stories collected in The Thing Around Your Neck,Template:Sfn Template:Sfn these themes symbolise the universality of power, or the impact and manifestation in society of its misuse.Template:Sfn

ViewsEdit

Feminist fashionEdit

File:Ms. magazine Cover - Summer 2014.jpg

Adichie on the cover of Ms. in 2014

Adichie, in a 2014 article written for Elle,Template:Sfn described becoming aware of a Western social norm that "women who wanted to be taken seriously were supposed to substantiate their seriousness with a studied indifference to appearance."Template:Sfn The western concept contrasted with her upbringing in Nigeria, because in West Africa the attention that a person pays to their fashion and style correlates to the amount of prestige and respectability they will be given by society.Template:Sfn She began to recognise that people were judged for the way that they dressed. In particular, women writers wrote disparagingly about or trivialised attention to fashion,Template:Sfn depicting woman who enjoyed fashion and makeup as silly, shallow or vain and without any depth.Template:Sfn Acknowledging the relationship between beauty, fashion, style and socio-political inequalities, Adichie became committed to promoting body positivity as a means to acquire agency.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn She began to focus on body politics, taking particular pride in her African features such as her skin colour, hair texture and curves,Template:Sfn and wearing bold designs featuring bright colours to make a statement about self-empowerment.Template:Sfn

Adichie was included on Vanity FairTemplate:`s 2016 International Best-Dressed List, and cited Michelle Obama as her style idol.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn That year, Maria Grazia Chiuri, the first female creative director of French fashion company Dior, featured in her debut collection a T-shirt with the title of Adichie's TED talk, "We Should All Be Feminists".Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Adichie was surprised to learn that Dior had never had a woman rule its creative division and agreed to a collaboration with Chiuri, who invited her as an honoured guest to sit in the front-row of the company's spring runway show during the 2016 Paris Fashion Week.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Scholar Matthew Lecznar stated that Adichie often challenges feminist stereotypes through references to fashion. He stated that allowing Dior to feature her text was a skillful way to use various media forms to not only deliver political messaging, but also to develop her image as a multi-faceted intellectual, literary and fashionable "transmedia phenomenon".Template:Sfn She became the face of No.7, a makeup brand division of British drugstore retailer Boots.Template:Sfn In her 2016 Facebook post Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, Adichie argued that minimising femininity and its expression through fashion and makeup is "part of a culture of sexism".Template:Sfn

On 8 May 2017, Adichie announced her "Wear Nigerian" campaign on her Facebook page. The Nigerian government had launched a "Buy Nigerian to Grow the Naira" campaign after the Nigerian naira experienced a devaluation.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn She set up an Instagram account that her nieces Chisom and Amaka managed,Template:Sfn and gained around 600,000 followers.Template:Sfn Adichie's goal was to help protect Nigeria's cultural heritage by showcasing the quality of craftsmanship and use of innovative hand-made techniques, materials and textiles being used by Nigerian designers.Template:Sfn Just as important was the idea of persuading Nigerians to buy local products, as opposed to purchasing garments abroad, as had been done in the past.Template:Sfn The posts on her page do not focus on her private life, but instead highlight her professional appearances all over the world, in an effort to show that style has the power to push boundaries and have global impact.Template:Sfn She won a Shorty Award in 2018 for her "Wear Nigerian" campaign,Template:Sfn and in 2019 was selected as one of 15 women to appear on the cover of the issue of British Vogue in an issue guest-edited by Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.Template:Sfn

In a 2021 discussion at Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, Adichie spoke with the former Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, and journalists Miriam Meckel and Léa Steinacker. They discussed that, for democracy to survive, people needed to preserve their traditions and history, be informed about intolerance and learn to accept diversity. Adichie said that she often uses fashion to educate people about diversity, and Merkel agreed that it could serve as a cultural bridge to bring people together globally.Template:Sfn

ReligionEdit

Although Adichie was raised as a Catholic, she considers her views, especially those on feminism, to sometimes conflict with her religion. As sectarian tensions in Nigeria arose between Christians and Muslims in 2012, she urged leaders to preach messages of peace and togetherness.Template:Sfn Adichie stated that her relationship to Catholicism is complicated because she identifies culturally as Catholic, but feels that the church's focus on money and guilt do not align with her values.Template:Sfn In a 2017 event at Georgetown University, she stated that differences in ideology between Catholic and Church Missionary Society leaders caused divisions in Nigerian society during her childhood, and she left the church around the time of the inauguration of Pope Benedict XVI in 2005.Template:Sfn She acknowledged that the birth of her daughter and election of Pope Francis drew her back to the Catholic faith and spurred her decision to raise her child as Catholic.Template:Sfn By 2021, Adichie stated that she was a nominal Catholic and only attended mass when she could find a progressive community focused on uplifting humanity. She clarified that "I think of myself as agnostic and questioning".Template:Sfn That year, her reflections on Pope Francis's encyclical Fratelli tutti were published in Italian in the 5 July edition of the Vatican's newspaper L'Osservatore Romano.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn In her article, "{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}" ("Dreaming as a Single Humanity"), Adichie recalled being berated at her mother's funeral for having criticised the church's focus on money, but she also acknowledged that Catholic rituals gave her solace during her mourning. She stated that Pope Francis' call in Fratelli tutti for recognition of everyone as part of the human family and for their responsibility to care for each other allowed her to re-imagine what the church might be.Template:Sfn

Gay rightsEdit

Adichie is an activist and supporter of LGBT rights in Africa and has been vocal in her support for LGBT rights in Nigeria.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn She has questioned whether consensual homosexual conduct between adults rises to the standard of a crime, as crime requires a victim and harm to society. When Nigeria passed an anti-homosexuality bill in 2014, she was among the Nigerian writers who objected to the law, calling it unconstitutional, unjust and "a strange priority to a country with so many real problems". She stated that adults expressing affection for each other did not cause harm to society, but that the law would "lead to crimes of violence".Template:Sfn Adichie was close friends with Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina, whom she credited with demystifying and humanising homosexuality when he publicly came out in 2014.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Writer Bernard Dayo said that Adichie's eulogy to Wainaina in 2019 perfectly captured the spirit of the "bold LGBTQ activist [of] the African literary world where homosexuality is still treated as a fringe concept."Template:Sfn

Opinions on Transgender InclusionEdit

Since 2017, Adichie has intermittently publicly discussed transgender topics, and some have accused her of transphobia.Template:Sfn In a 2017 Channel 4 interview, Adichie said that "When people talk about, you know, 'Are trans women women?', my feeling is that trans women are trans women". She stated that the experiences of woman who "has lived as a man, with the privileges the world accords to men" are not the same experiences as "a woman who, from the beginning, has lived in the world as a woman".Template:Sfn Template:Sfn In a follow-up Facebook post, Adichie stated that transgender women and other women's experiences are different, and one could acknowledge those differences without invalidating or diminishing either group's lived experience.Template:Sfn She stated "I said, in an interview, that trans women are trans women, that they are people who, having been born male, benefited from the privileges that the world affords men, and that we should not say that the experience of women born female is the same as the experience of trans women.... I think the impulse to say that trans women are women just like women born female are women comes from a need to make trans issues mainstream. Because by making them mainstream, we might reduce the many oppressions they experience.... Perhaps I should have said trans women are trans women and cis women are cis women and all are women. Except that 'cis' is not an organic part of my vocabulary. And would probably not be understood by a majority of people. Because saying 'trans' and 'cis' acknowledges that there is a distinction between women born female and women who transition, without elevating one or the other, which was my point.... I have and will continue to stand up for the rights of transgender people. Not merely because of the violence they experience but because they are equal human beings deserving to be what they are".Template:Sfn She stressed that girls are socialised in ways that damage their self-worth, which has a lasting impact throughout their lives, whereas boys benefit from the advantages of male privilege, before transitioning.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn

The controversy emerged again in 2020 when Adichie voiced support for J. K. Rowling's article on gender and sex, in an interview in the British newspaper, The Guardian, calling the essay "perfectly reasonable".Template:Sfn Template:Sfn That interview sparked a Twitter backlash from critics of her opinion, which included a former graduate of one of Adichie's writing workshops, Akwaeke Emezi.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn In response, Adichie penned "It Is Obscene: A True Reflection in Three Parts" and posted it on her website in June 2021, criticising the use of social media to air out grievances.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The following month, students who were members of the LGBT community at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, boycotted her public lecture on their campus.Template:Sfn Adichie stated in an interview with Otosirieze Obi-Young in September that she was "deeply hurt" by the backlash and that during the controversy, she had read anything she could find on trans topics to help her understand what was going on.Template:Sfn

In late 2022, Adichie faced further criticism for her views after another interview with The Guardian when she said, "So somebody who looks like my brother—he says, 'I'm a woman', and walks into the women's bathroom, and a woman goes, 'You're not supposed to be here', and she's transphobic?"Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The magazine PinkNews said that Adichie "remains insensitive" and that she was using "harmful rhetoric".Template:Sfn Academic Cheryl Stobie said that Adichie supported an "exclusionary conceptualisation of gender".Template:Sfn Researcher B. Camminga stated that Adichie's fame led to her comments on trans women being elevated and the voices of other African women, both trans and cis, being silenced.Template:Sfn

Public speakingEdit

File:In Conversation Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Anne-Marie Slaughter (34792044310) (cropped).jpg

Adichie and Anne-Marie Slaughter at the New America Conference in 2017

In 2009, Adichie delivered a TED Talk titled "The Danger of a Single Story".Template:Sfn In the talk, Adichie expressed her concern that accepting one version of a story perpetrates myths and stereotypesTemplate:Sfn because it fails to recognise the complexities of human life and situations.Template:Sfn She argued that under-representation of the layers that make up a person's identity or culture deprives them of their humanity.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Adichie has continued to reuse the message drawn from the talk in her subsequent speeches, including her address at the Hilton Humanitarian Symposium of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation in 2019.Template:Sfn On 15 March 2012, Adichie became the youngest person to deliver a Commonwealth Lecture.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The presentation was given at the Guildhall in London addressing the theme "Connecting Cultures".Template:Sfn Adichie said, "Realistic fiction is not merely the recording of the real, as it were, it is more than that, it seeks to infuse the real with meaning. As events unfold, we do not always know what they mean. But in telling the story of what happened, meaning emerges and we are able to make connections with emotive significance."Template:Sfn She stated that literature could build bridges between cultures because it united the imaginations of all who read the same books.Template:Sfn

Adichie accepted an invitation to speak in London in 2012,Template:Sfn at TEDxEuston, because a series of talks focusing on African affairs was being organised by her brother Chuks, who worked in the technology and information development department there, and she wanted to help him.Template:Sfn In her presentation, "We Should All Be Feminists", Adichie stressed the importance of reclaiming the word "feminist"Template:Sfn to combat the negative connotations previously associated with it.Template:Sfn She said that feminism should be about exploring the intersections of oppression, such as how class, race, gender and sexuality influence equal opportunities and human rights,Template:Sfn Template:Sfn causing global gender gaps in education, pay and power.Template:Sfn In 2015, Adichie returned to the theme of feminism at the commencement address for Wellesley College and reminded students that they should not allow their ideologies to exclude other ideas and should "minister to the world in a way that can change it. Minister radically in a real, active, practical, 'get your hands dirty' way".Template:Sfn She has spoken at many commencement ceremonies, including at Williams College (2017),Template:Sfn Harvard University (2018),Template:Sfn and the American University (2019).Template:Sfn Adichie was the first African to speak at Yale University's Class Day, giving a lecture in 2019 that encouraged students to be open to new experiences and ideas and "find a way to marry idealism and pragmatism because there are complicated shades of grey everywhere".Template:Sfn

Adichie co-curated the 2015 PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature in New York City, along with festival director Laszlo Jakab Orsos.Template:Sfni Template:Sfn The festival theme was contemporary literature of Africa and its diaspora.Template:Sfn She closed the conference with her Arthur Miller Freedom to Write lecture, which focused on censorship and using one's voice to speak out against injustices.Template:Sfn In addressing her audience, she pointed out cultural differences between Nigeria and America, such as the code of silence, which, in the United States, often acts as censorship. She stated that molding a story to fit an existing narrative, such as characterising the Boko Haram's kidnapping of schoolgirls as equal to the Taliban's treatment of women, is a form of censorship which hides the truth that Boko Haram opposes western-style education for anyone.Template:Sfn Although she did not speak of her father's recent kidnapping and release, writer Nicole Lee of The Guardian said that the crowd was aware of her personal ordeal, which made her speech "all the more poignant".Template:Sfn

In 2016, Adichie was invited to speak about her thoughts on Donald Trump's election to the US Presidency for the BBC's television current affairs programme Newsnight. When she arrived at the studio, she was informed that the format would be a debate between her and R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., a Trump supporter and the editor-in-chief of The American Spectator, a conservative magazine.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Tempted to walk out of the interview, Adichie decided to continue because she wanted to discuss her views on how economic disenfranchisement had led to Trump's victory.Template:Sfn The debate turned adversarial when Tyrrell said "I do not respond emotionally like this lady",Template:Sfn and then declared that "Trump hasn't been a racist".Template:Sfn Adichie countered his statements and gave an example citing Trump's statement that Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel could not be impartial in the case Low v. Trump University because of his Mexican heritage.Template:Sfn After the debate, she wrote on her Facebook page that she felt ambushed by the BBC and that they had "sneakily [pitted her] against a Trump supporter" to create adversarial entertainment. In response, the BBC issued an apology for not informing her of the nature of the interview, but claimed that they had designed the programme to offer a balanced perspective.Template:Sfn

File:Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 2020 (cropped).jpg

Adichie at the speaker's podium during the Template:Ill, Santiago, Chile, in 2020

Adichie delivered the second annual Eudora Welty Lecture on 8 November 2017 at the Lincoln Theatre in Washington, D.C. The lecture was presented to a sold-out crowd and focused on her development as a writer.Template:Sfn That year, she also spoke at the Foreign Affairs Symposium held at Johns Hopkins University. Her talk focused on the fragility of optimism in the face of the current political climate.Template:Sfn Adichie and Hillary Clinton delivered the 2018 PEN World Voices Festival, Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture at Cooper Union in Manhattan. Although the speech was centered on feminism and censorship, Adichie's questioning of why Clinton's Twitter profile began with "wife" instead of her own accomplishments became the focus of media attention,Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Template:Sfn prompting Clinton to change her Twitter bio.Template:Sfn Later that year, she spoke at the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany about breaking the cycles which silence women's voices. She stated that studies had shown that women read literature created by men and women, but men primarily read works by other men. She urged men to begin to read women writers' works to gain an understanding and be able to acknowledge women's struggles in society.Template:Sfn In 2019, as part of the Chancellor's Lecture Series, she gave the speech "Writer, Thinker, Feminist: Vignettes from Life" at Vanderbilt University's Langford Auditorium. The speech focused on her development as a storyteller, and her motives for addressing systemic inequalities to create a more inclusive world.Template:Sfn

Adichie has been the keynote speaker at numerous global conferences.Template:Sfn In 2018, she spoke at the seventh annual International Igbo Conference, and encouraged the audience to preserve their culture and fight misconceptions and inaccuracies about Igbo heritage.Template:Sfn She revealed in her presentation "{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}" ("Igbo Is Igbo") that she only speaks to her daughter in Igbo, which was the only language her daughter spoke at the age of two.Template:Sfn Speaking at the inaugural Gabriel García Márquez Lecture in Cartagena, Colombia in 2019, Adichie addressed violence in the country and urged leaders to focus on educating citizens from childhood to reject violence and sexual exploitation and end violent behaviors. Her speech was given in the Nelson Mandela barrio, one of the poorest neighborhoods of the city, and she encouraged Black women to work with men to change the violent culture and celebrate their African roots.Template:Sfn Her keynote address at the 2020 Template:Ill (Future Conference) in Santiago, Chile, focused on the importance of listening. She said that, to become an effective advocate, a person must understand a wide variety of perspectives. She stressed that people become better problem solvers if they learn to listen to people with whom they may not agree, because other points of view help everyone recognise their common humanity.Template:Sfn She was the keynote speaker of the 2021 Reykjavik International Literature Festival held in the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} cinema at the University of Iceland, and presented the talk In Pursuit of Joy: On Storytelling, Feminism, and Changing My Mind.Template:Sfn On 30 November 2022, Adichie delivered the first of the BBC's 2022 Reith Lectures, inspired by Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" speech.Template:Sfn Her talk explored how to balance the right to freedom of speech against those who undermine facts with partisan messaging.Template:Sfn

LegacyEdit

InfluenceEdit

Larissa MacFarquhar of The New Yorker stated that Adichie is "regarded as one of the most vital and original novelists of her generation".Template:Sfn Her works have been translated into more than 30 languages.Template:Sfn Obi-Young Otosirieze pointed out in his cover story about Adichie for the Nigerian magazine Open Country Mag in September 2021, that "her novels ... broke down a wall in publishing. Purple Hibiscus proved that there was an international market for African realist fiction post-Achebe [and] Half of a Yellow Sun showed that that market could care about African histories".Template:Sfn In an earlier article published in Brittle Paper, he stated that Half of a Yellow SunTemplate:'s paperback release in 2006 sold 500,000 copies, the benchmark of commercial success for a book, by October 2009 in the UK alone.Template:Sfn Her novel Americanah sold 500,000 copies in the US within two years of its 2013 release.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Template:As of, "The Danger of a Single Story" had received more than 27 million views.Template:Sfn As of 1 September 2023, the talk is one of the top 25 most viewed TED Talks of all time.Template:Sfn

According to Lisa Allardice, a journalist writing for The Guardian, Adichie became the "poster girl for modern feminism after her 2012 TED Talk 'We Should All Be Feminists' went stratospheric and was distributed in book form to every 16-year-old in Sweden".Template:Sfn Adichie has become "a global feminist icon" and a recognised "public thinker" per journalist Lauren Alix Brown.Template:Sfn Parts of Adichie's TEDx Talk were sampled in the song "Flawless" by singer Beyoncé on 13 December 2013. When asked in an NPR interview about that, Adichie responded that "anything that gets young people talking about feminism is a very good thing."Template:Sfn She later refined the statement in an interview with the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant, saying that she liked and admired Beyoncé and gave permission to use her text because the singer "reached many people who would otherwise probably never have heard the word feminism." But, she went on to state that the sampling caused a media frenzy with requests from newspapers world-wide who were keen to report on her new-found fame because of Beyoncé. Adichie said, "I am a writer and I have been for some time and I refuse to perform in this charade that is now apparently expected of me". She was disappointed by the media portrayal, but acknowledged that "Thanks to Beyoncé, my life will never be the same again."Template:Sfn Adichie was outspoken against critics who later questioned the singer's credentials as a feminist because she uses her sexuality to "pander to the male gaze". In defence of Beyoncé, Adichie said: "Whoever says they're feminist is bloody feminist."Template:Sfn

Scholar Matthew Lecznar said that Adichie's stature as "one of most prominent writers and feminists of the age" allowed her to use her celebrity "to demonstrate the power of dress and empower people from diverse contexts to embrace [fashion] ... which has everything to do with the politics of identity".Template:Sfn Academics Floriana Bernardi and Enrica Picarelli credited her support of the Nigerian fashion industry with helping put Nigeria "at the forefront" of the movement to use fashion as a globally-recognised political mechanism of empowerment.Template:Sfn Toyin Falola, a professor of history, in an evaluation of scholarship in Nigeria, criticised the policy of elevating academic figures prematurely. He argued that scholarship, particularly in the humanities, should challenge policies and processes to strengthen the social contract between citizens and government. He suggested that the focus should shift from recognising scholars who merely influenced other scholars to acknowledging intellectuals who use their talents to benefit the state and serve as mentors to Nigerian youth. Adichie was among those he felt qualified as "intellectual heroes", who had "push[ed] forward the boundaries of social change".Template:Sfn

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Adichie on the Concepción Feminist Mural in Madrid, Spain

Adichie's book Half of a Yellow Sun was adapted into a film of the same title directed by Biyi Bandele in 2013.Template:Sfn In 2018, a painting of Adichie was included in a wall mural at the Municipal Sport Center in the Concepción barrio of Madrid, along with 14 other historically influential women. The 15 women were selected by members of the neighborhood to give a visible representation of the role of women in history and to serve as a symbol of equality. The neighborhood residents defeated a move by conservative politicians to remove the mural in 2021 through a petition drive of collected signatures.Template:Sfn

Luke Ndidi Okolo, a lecturer a Nnamdi Azikiwe University said:Template:Sfn

Adichie's novel treats clear and lofty subjects and themes. But the subjects and themes, however, are not new to African novels. The remarkable difference of excellence in Chimamanda Adichie's Purple Hibiscus is the stylistic variation—her choice of linguistic and literary features, and the pattern of application of the features in such a wondrous juxtaposition of characters' reasoning and thought.{{#if:|{{#if:|}}
— {{#if:|, in }}Template:Comma separated entries
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Adichie's work has garnered significant critical acclaim and numerous awards.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Book critics such as Daria Tunca wrote that Adichie's work is considerably relevant and stated that she was a major voice in the Third Generation of Nigerian writers,Template:Sfn while Izuu Nwankwọ called her invented Igbo naming scheme as an "artform", which she has perfected in her works.Template:Sfn He lauded her ability to insert Igbo language and meaning into an English-language text without disrupting the flow or distorting the storyline.Template:Sfn In the judgement of Ernest Emenyonu, one of the most prominent scholars of Igbo literature,Template:Sfn Adichie was "the leading and most engaging voice of her era" and he has described her as "Africa's preeminent storyteller".Template:Sfn Toyin Falola, a professor of history, hailed her along other writers, as "intellectual heroes".Template:Sfn Her memoir, Notes on Grief was positively praised by Kirkus Reviews as "an elegant, moving contribution to the literature of death and dying."Template:Sfn Leslie Gray Streeter of The Independent said that Adichie's view on grief "puts a welcome, authentic voice to this most universal of emotions, which is also one of the most universally avoided."Template:Sfn She has been widely recognised as "the literary daughter of Chinua Achebe".Template:Sfn Jane Shilling of the Daily Telegraph called her "one who makes storytelling seem as easy as birdsong".Template:Sfn

Adichie has gained wide praise for her speeches and lectures.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Journalist Shreya Ila Anasuya described Adichie's public speaking as delightful and articulate, noting that her timing allowed sufficient pauses for the audience response, before she continued by distilling "her wisdom into the simplest and most compassionate of telling".Template:Sfn Critic Erica Wagner called Adichie a "star", stating that she spoke with fluency and power, exuding authority and confidence. She called "The Danger of a Single Story" an "accessible essay on how we might see the world through another's eyes".Template:Sfn Media and communications professor Erika M. Behrmann, who reviewed Adichie's TEDxEuston Talk, "We Should All Be Feminists" praised her as a "gifted storyteller", who was able to intimately connect with her audience. Behrmann stated that the talk used language that made it relatable to children and adults, giving a basic foundation for students to learn about feminist ideas and issues, as well as learning about how gender is socially constructed by culture. She also said that Adichie demonstrated that gender inequality is a global challenge, and offered solutions to combat disparities by focussing less on gender roles and more on developing skills based upon ability and interests.Template:Sfn However, Behrmann criticised the lack of discussion in the talk on the intersectional aspects of peoples' identities and Adichie's reliance on binary terms (boy/girl, man/woman, male/female), which left "little room to imagine and explore how transgender and genderqueer" people contribute to or are impacted by feminism.Template:Sfn Emenyonu said that her "talks, blogs, musings on social media, essays and commentaries, workshop mentoring for budding writers and lecture circuit discourses ... expand and define her mission as a writer".Template:Sfn Scholar Grace Musila said Adiche's brand encompasses her reputation as a writer, public figure, and fashionista, which expanded her reach and the legitimacy of her ideas far beyond academic circles.Template:Sfn

Critical reputationEdit

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} Adichie received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2008,Template:Sfn with her other academic awards including the 2011–2012 Fellowship of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.Template:Sfn In 2002, she was shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing for her story "You in America".Template:Sfn Template:Sfn She also won the BBC World Service Short Story Competition for "That Harmattan Morning", while her short story "The American Embassy" won the 2003 O. Henry Award and the David T. Wong International Short Story Prize from PEN International.Template:Sfn

Her 2003 debut novel, Purple Hibiscus, was well received, earning positive reviews.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The book sold well and was awarded the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for the Best Book (2005), Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction (2004).Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) garnered further acclaim, including winning the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2007,Template:Sfn the International Nonino Prize (2009),Template:Sfn Template:Sfn and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.Template:Sfn Adichie's story collection The Thing Around Your Neck was the runner-up to the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for 2010.Template:Sfn One story from the book, "Ceiling", was included in The Best American Short Stories 2011.Template:Sfn Americanah was listed among The New York Times "10 Best Books of 2013",Template:Sfn Template:Sfn and won the National Book Critics Circle Award (2014),Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Template:Sfn and the One City One Book (2017).Template:Sfn Her book Dear Ijeawele, translated into French as {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, won the Le Grand Prix de l'Héroïne Madame Figaro in the category of best non-fiction book in 2017.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn

Adichie was a finalist of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction (2014).Template:Sfn She won the Barnard Medal of Distinction (2016),Template:Sfn and the W. E. B. Du Bois Medal (2022), the highest honour from Harvard University.Template:Sfn She was listed in The New YorkerTemplate:'s "20 Under 40" authors in 2010, and in 2014 was selected for Africa39, a project initiated by the Hay Festival.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>Template:Sfn She was named on the Time 100 list in 2015,Template:Sfn and was on The Africa ReportTemplate:'s list of the "100 Most Influential Africans" in 2019.Template:Sfn In 2018, she was selected as the winner of the PEN Pinter Prize, which recognises writers whose body of literary work uncovers truth through critical analysis of life and society. The award recipient chooses the winner of the companion prize, the Pinter International Writer of Courage Award, for which Adichie named Waleed Abulkhair, a Saudi Arabian lawyer and human rights activist.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The Women's Prize for Fiction, formerly known as the Orange Prize, selected 25 candidates for its Winner of Winners in honour of its 25th anniversary celebrations in 2020. The public chose Adichie for Half of a Yellow Sun for the award.Template:Sfn

In 2017, Adichie was elected as one of 228 new members to be inducted into the 237th class of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, making her the second Nigerian to be given the honour after Wole Soyinka.Template:Sfn As of March 2022, Adichie had received 16 honorary degrees from universitiesTemplate:Sfn President of Nigeria Muhammadu Buhari selected her as a recipient of the Order of the Federal Republic in 2022,Template:Sfn but Adichie rejected the national distinction.Template:Sfn On 30 December 2022, Adichie was honoured with the title of "Odeluwa", a chieftaincy position, by her hometown of Abba in Anambra State, making her the first woman to receive a chieftaincy title in Abba.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn