Purple Hibiscus Biography

First Come, First Served

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born September 15, 1977 in Enugu, Nigeria to Igbo parents, Grace Ifeoma and James Nwoye Adichie. She was the fifth of six children in a middle class family. Both of her parents worked at the University of Nigeria, located in Nsukka. Her father worked as a professor and her mother worked as an administrator. When Adichie became 19, she embarked on a journey to the U.S. in order to go to college at Drexel University in Philadelphia to study communication for two years. Then she furthered her education by pursuing degrees in communications and political science at Eastern Connecticut State University. While at Eastern Connecticut State University Adichie wrote for the university journal, the

Upon its release, her novel received wide critical acclaim. Purple Hibiscus was shortlisted for the Orange Fiction Prize (2004) and received the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book (2005). Her success did not end there as she continued to receive awards for her other novels: Half a Yellow Sun (2006) and Americanah (2013). Adichie was a Hodder fellow at Princeton University, during the 2005-2006 academic year, and received an MA in African Studies from Yale University (2008). She was awarded with a fellowship by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University in 2011-2012. Adichie is currently married and raising her daughter. She spends her time both in the U.S. and Nigeria, where she teaches writing workshops. On July 2009 at TEDGlobal she gave a Ted Talk titled The Danger of a Single Story.(The Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Website)

The main point of Adichie’s TED Talk is that we need to be able to look at information, or as she calls them “stories” and be able to look at them from different perspectives instead of one. She references these single perspectives as “single stories”. She talks about incidences in her life where she has been a culprit and a victim of these single stories. Adichie also speaks briefly about why she thinks that we are all victims to this form of thinking and how we can change our ways. There are some other miniscule topics woven into the talk, such as international power and media distribution.