photos from Ngozi Adichie’s website and INBOUND
Renowned writer, storyteller and leader Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian-American novelist (Americanah, Half of a Yellow Sun), short-story writer, essayist, feminist, MacArthur Fellow, one of Fortune Magazine’s “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders,” one of TIME magazine’s “100 most influential people,” and TED-talker (The danger of a single story, We should all be feminists), among other accolades. (She is also an alum of Eastern Connecticut State University [undergrad and honorary doctorate] and Yale [M.A. and honorary doctorate]).
In this INBOUND speech on the power of storytelling, she shares part of her own path — including bagels, football, gatekeepers, discovering American poverty, independent booksellers, becoming “black” in America, the “grace and grit that is African-American history in this country,” identity and rights and stereotypes, gender socialization, blind spots, injustice and religion, seeing the ways men benefit and suffer from patriarchy, and more.
She also offers us a powerful reminder of the ways stories can take away — and restore — dignity:
…any story, if done well, becomes universal. Because in telling stories we appeal to that which is human in all of us… different viewpoints matter… we all learn from one another.
…I believe that we can truly hear each other’s stories; we can create a world where everyone truly feels that they matter. But the reason it’s difficult to do is because we have long had a world in which we did not hear each other’s stories and where everyone did not feel that they truly mattered. And so, to truly hear one another, we need to create more space.
There’s something wonderful and affirming about reading about your own reality and reading about people like you, and nobody should ever be denied of that pleasure… If she reads diverse books to her children, then she’s preparing them hopefully for a world in which their conception of people is wider and healthier.
We are all vulnerable to stereotypes, we are all guilty of absorbing stereotypes… The systems of oppression, the cultural and societal ideas and institutions that perpetuate these various injustices are what we need to remake… we can do so by telling a different story.
I think every human with a heart should be angry about various injustices in the world, but my being angry about injustice does not make me an angry person. (And by the way, ‘an angry person’ is just a made up, empty idea that is used to close conversations.)
Often I wonder with sadness, how much the world has lost out on, how much we have missed from talented people who have held themselves back because they know that they will not be judged fairly. Racism is a strong word that makes everyone uncomfortable. But what if we start to think of these isms in terms of stories? So what if instead of talking about racism, we talk about the fact that a black American young boy, a child, is not allowed merely to be a child. That to be a young black American boy today means that you do certain things that in other non-black bodies would be considered ‘what a child does.’ But in the body of a black boy, becomes threatening or disruptive, it becomes a reason to suspend him from school, it becomes a reason to murder him. I dream of a world, a fair world… behavior is judged in the same way no matter the physical body that exhibits that behavior.
I dream of the way I wish the world were… that I know the world can be. I truly believe that we can remake the world… but first we must imagine it.
INBOUND’s purpose is to provide the inspiration, education, and connections we need to transform our lives and businesses.
Curated by The Circle’s Creative Director & Editor, Lara Herscovitch (Cohort 10). To reach Lara directly: thecircle@clpnewhaven.org or Lara@LaraHerscovitch.com