Adichie chimamanda ngozi americanah6/20/2023 On the American tradition of higher education Adichie had yet to learn fully about the history of slavery - and its continuing reverberations - in the U.S. The history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade was not taught to students in Nigeria. She felt that her African-American classmate was annoyed with her because Adichie didn't share her anger - but she didn't have the context to understand why. "I remember sitting there thinking, 'But what's so bad about watermelons? Because I quite like watermelons,' " Adichie tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. A student had said something about watermelon to an African-American classmate, who was offended by the comment. Adichie recalls, for example, an undergraduate class in which the subject of watermelon came up. The learning process took some time and was episodic. Race as an idea became something that she had to navigate and learn. As a black African in America, Adichie was suddenly confronted with what it meant to be a person of color in the United States. That changed when she arrived in the United States for college. When the novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was growing up in Nigeria she was not used to being identified by the color of her skin. This interview was originally broadcast on June 27, 2013. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Americanah Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |