Motherhood, writer’s block and championing women’s experiences, with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

0:00Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:Net-a-Porter presents The Incredible Women Podcast, Series 10, Supernovas. Welcome to the 10th series of The Incredible Women Podcast, where we sit down with women who shine bright and draw greatness into their orbits. All at the top of their game, some of these incredible women you'll already be familiar with, and others we're excited to introduce you to. I'm Alice Casely-Hayford, Content Director at Net-A-Porter, and I'm thrilled to be joined for this episode of our Supernova series by best-selling author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

0:35Incredible Women Host:Becoming a mother kind of placed me on a different plane of emotional complexity. And I'm grateful for that. I think there are things that I think quite differently about because I'm a mother. And hopefully, I think not just differently, but hopefully more empathetically. maybe.

0:54Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Nigeria in 1977. She grew up on the campus of the University of Nigeria, where her father was a professor and her mother was the university's first female registrar. She studied medicine for a year before moving to the United States at 19 to pursue a different academic path. She attended Eastern Connecticut State University and holds master's degrees from both Johns Hopkins University and Yale. Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus, published in 2003, won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and her second novel, released in 2006, Half of a Yellow Sun, won the Orange Prize.

1:34Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:Her 2013 novel, Americana, was named one of the New York Times' top 10 best books of the year. Adichie has delivered two landmark TED Talks, her 2009 talk, The Danger of a Single Story, and her 2012 talk, We Should All be feminists, which sparked a global conversation about feminism and was published as a book in 2014. In 2015, Adichie was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world. And in 2017, Fortune magazine named her one of the world's 50 greatest leaders. She splits her time between the United States and Nigeria, where she leads an annual creative writing workshop.

2:13Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:Let's meet Jim Amanda. Hi Jimamanda, welcome to the Incredible Women podcast. It is such an honour to have you joining us today. How are you doing? I am very well, thank you. Good, well, first and foremost, congratulations on DreamCount and its release into the world earlier this year. It's been a while since the last one, I think 11 years. How does it feel now that it's been out in the world for a few months? Well, I'm relieved that I actually finally finished the bloody book.

2:44Incredible Women Host:That's the first thing. No, but actually, really, my overriding feeling is gratitude. I, you know, had many years in which I couldn't write. I mean, the reason it took so long is that I had that horrible affliction called writer's block. And so I couldn't write for a long time. And I was just desperately unhappy. So right now, the fact that I finished this novel and it's out and it has readers and the characters have come alive in people's imaginations, I just feel so grateful. I really do. The novel has blog posts called For Men Only that I wish more people will take notice of. And I encourage women to read them to their boyfriends and husbands and partners, male partners.

3:35Incredible Women Host:They're written by my character whose name is Omelago. And the idea of the blog post is that she's helping men to navigate relationship problems. And so one of them, for example, is this is how to say sorry. You don't say sorry by doing nice things. You don't say sorry by pretending nothing happened. Actually, you say sorry by saying sorry. And I've been told reliably that this has in fact been useful in one relationship so far.

4:04Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:That's amazing. Well, what a beautiful book it is. But before we delve into that, what was it that unlocked your writer's block? How were you able to start writing again?

4:14Incredible Women Host:My father had died. And then, you know, months later, very unexpectedly and very sort of shockingly, my mother died. And then a few weeks later, I started writing fiction again. And so, of course, I would, if I had a choice, I very much want my mother to still be here. and I still want to write but I think I like to say that my mother helped me that my mother's spirit was very present in the writing I think my mother knew that I would need something to help me just cope day to day with the just the you know the unbelievably painful reality of losing my parents in the way that I did and for a person like me who was just such a daughter you know my My entire identity for so long was just that I was the daughter of my parents.

5:10Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:Well, it is such a beautiful book and it is very much about four women's lives that are interwoven, but also about a mother and daughter relationship. Are there particular aspects of your mother that you brought to life within the book?

5:28Incredible Women Host:Um, I, well, I, it's, it's difficult to say. I don't think, you know, this is a book that I wrote from a place of grief. In some ways, it feels as though you've kind of basked in having this cover over your life, your whole life. And then just very suddenly, that cover is ripped off. So this book was written from that kind of strange place. but it's not a book about grief and I don't think it's a sad book either. I think it has some melancholy but I don't think it's sad. Actually you know I hope people laugh reading some parts of it. A lot. This makes me happy. This makes me very happy because I laugh reading some writing some parts of it but so I'm not sure there's much of my mother in a very direct way but there are many mother characters in the novel but of course I did steal some things from my mother by which I mean just small things like what she would say.

6:21Incredible Women Host:My mother was very good at mocking Americans for not speaking English properly, for example. She would say, Why do they say there is many? That is incorrect. It should be there. And then one of her sort of, she would say this very often and I use it in a novel where the mother character says, Why do they say grab lunch? What are you grabbing? My mother found this just wrong. on. Well, that sounds actually very familiar. I think I just wasn't, and I still probably am not in a place where I can write about my mother in a direct way. It's still too difficult.

7:00Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:I understand that. But in terms of you becoming a mother, when that happened, did that change your writing process? You've spoken before about in early motherhood, you actually struggled a bit with writing. How did you get over that phase? And how did your writing process evolve? Well, I haven't gotten over that feeling.

7:20Incredible Women Host:I'm still blaming my daughter and now my sons for everything. The reason I haven't written five more novels is because I have children. But really, I think I do think that motherhood, and I think this is important to talk about in general, that I think motherhood for me has been the greatest gift I've been given, really. But I also think it's important to talk about the cost of it for women. And I think most women in the world want to do things with their lives. Women who are very grateful to be mothers and are just deeply joyful, but also find that when you become a mother, there's certain things that you just suddenly feel you're not doing as well as you could.

7:55Incredible Women Host:You're having to give up. You're having to put away for a while, sometimes forever, you know. And when I got pregnant with my daughter, my daughter is now almost 10. I remember saying, why did nobody tell me that something happens to your brain? Honestly, I just felt like I became dense overnight. I couldn't think clearly. I didn't understand things anymore. And I thought I was going mad. And then I started reading about how pregnancy can, in fact, cause major brain fog. And then when my baby came, I think I spent so much time reading just utterly demoralizing books about what you're supposed to do as a mother, which I just suggest to every new mother, do not read them.

8:37Incredible Women Host:Yeah. I just follow your, do not read those books. I spent so much time doing that instead of writing fiction. No, but really, there's also just the sort of very fundamental idea of time. You just don't have as much time to write because part of being a mother is that you give up your time to this great love that has come to your life. But I also think, on the other hand, that becoming a mother kind of placed me on a different plane of emotional complexity. And I'm grateful for that. I think there are things that I think quite differently about because I'm a mother. And hopefully, I think not just differently, but hopefully more, I suppose, more empathetically, maybe.

9:23Incredible Women Host:So in a way, I think for a creative person, there's a give and take to motherhood that you can't, you will navigate until they leave home. Actually, no, until you die. Forever. Because you never really, yeah, forever.

9:35Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:Exactly. Exactly. Well, I think it's so important and interesting what you say about those irrevocable changes in motherhood and battling sort of a new identity. But in terms of that compromise beyond motherhood, how do you juggle your multifaceted life and career? You said recently in an interview that you are inundated with invitations each week and you say no to 85 percent of them. So it feels like a double honour that we've got you here today. But how do you decide what's the criteria for saying yes to something in terms of what drives you every day and what do you say yes to and what's it sort of easy to say no to?

10:14Incredible Women Host:It's actually an interesting question. Sometimes it's instinctive. You know, sometimes it's do they understand elegant fashion? Okay. Do they appreciate the good things of like such as high heels and lipsticks? Yes. Often if it's something that I think will benefit from my presence, and I mean that in a very kind of just practical way. So if it's, for example, I spent the whole summer at home in Nigeria and, you know, visiting a small school that would ordinarily just not necessarily be known or heard of. That kind of thing can be very meaningful to me because I think I'm being useful in a practical way, but also I'm learning.

10:59Incredible Women Host:I enjoy literary sort of events. I enjoy events that deeply celebrate the beauty of books and literature. Those I love. And really, I mean, I joked earlier about elegant fashion, but I'm also drawn to, I'm doing this. Yeah, I'm drawn to platforms that treat a woman's interest in her appearance in a legitimate and intelligent way. I find that interesting because I've just felt very strongly that there are many women like me in the world, which is women who are deeply devoted to their intellectual, interior lives, but also care about their appearance and shouldn't be made to feel apologetic about it.

11:44Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:Totally and that is so important and refreshing to hear it is not a trivial pursuit fashion it's not at all it really isn't an art but we'll get on to fashion later but okay but to take it back to the very beginning what are your earliest memories of writing and when did you fall in love with your craft and realize that writing not could but would be your career path?

12:08Incredible Women Host:I don't know when I did not write. I don't, you know, this is all I've always known, really. And so I like to say, and it does sound a little bit, you know, a little much, but I say that I really believe my ancestors brought me here to tell stories and to write. I really believe that because I started writing when I was old enough to spell and it's just always, it's my vocation. It's the thing that gives me meaning. It's what I want to do all the time if I could really. But I don't think I ever really thought about making it a career. Because I, you know, I also grew up in Nigeria, grew up the daughter of university people who are also quite practical.

12:45Incredible Women Host:And, you know, the question would be writing, okay, but how do you expect to pay your rent? Yes, which and growing up in Nigeria, writing was not a thing that was particularly lucrative. So I was supposed to become a doctor, and I actually did one year of medical school. So writing has always been, And in some ways, it feels to me like this great love that I have, this vocation, this calling. And then I have now become so fortunate to be making a living from my calling. And I hadn't known that I could until, honestly, relatively recently. Wow.

13:19Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:Well, going back to your youth, who were the writers that made the biggest impact on you and have shaped your career? And then when you moved to the U.S. in your teens, did that open up a whole new world of literature for you? And who were the writers then that you discovered that changed your path?

13:37Incredible Women Host:Yes. I mean, moving to the U.S. certainly opened up so many things. When I was growing up, you know, growing up in Nigeria, growing up in a middle class household, I was growing up on a university campus, books were very important. And I really read, I read more British literature than American, I think, when I was much younger, because that was what was available. And then, you know, I started out reading these sort of British children's books, which is why the first things I wrote were stories about white British children. Because there is a level, I think, of imitation in early creativity. So I thought, you know, this is what books are.

14:16Incredible Women Host:Books are things in which little white children play in the snow. And so that's what I wrote. Never mind that I'd never seen snow at the time. moment. I think the writers that really changed things for me, the African writers that I began reading when I was a little older. And so I like to talk about Chino Achebe, who I think really is one of the greatest storytellers ever. And there was a writer called Kamara Lai who wrote a beautiful little book called The African Child, which is sometimes also translated as The Dark Child, because he wrote it in French. That was very important to me. And there's Flora Mwapa, who was the first Igbo woman to publish fiction in English.

14:58Incredible Women Host:And I think it was a shift for me. So I talk about those writers as not just being important in a literary sense, but also in a political sense, because they gave me permission to tell my own stories. I read those books. I loved them. They were quite different in a way. You know, they were familiar, but also kind of exotic because they were about my past, my cultural past. but they gave me permission to tell the stories that I knew. So they were really important to me. When I came to the US, I discovered more of a certain kind of contemporary American literature. And Toni Morrison was a writer who was very important to me.

15:35Incredible Women Host:I just, I remember reading the first novel of hers that I read was probably The Bluest Eye. And at some point I stopped because I thought to myself, my God, it is so painful, but what kind of courage does this woman have to stare pain in the face. So she's, and she still remains very important to me. But there's so many American writers who, you know, I discovered, and I think I learned from every book that I love. And then every time I'm asked which writer, especially contemporary writers, I get worried because I think I'm going to say some names and then one of my friends will call me and be like, wait, why did you?

16:15Incredible Women Host:Or a writer I love will say, well, you did send me that lovely email about how much you loved my book. but you haven't mentioned it in your interview. So I'll just be very sort of vague and say there are many wonderful writers. Yes, exactly.

16:28Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:But aside from all of those fantastic writers you've listed, it sounds like your parents have been the greatest influence on your life. And in terms of your feminism, are they the key influences on that? Or are there other people throughout your life that have made that such a huge part of your storytelling and platform?

16:52Incredible Women Host:I think just growing up in a family that with parents who saw me and with a mother who while she of course understood there are differences between her daughters and her sons did not let those differences stifle any of her children and so I grew up with brothers who were expected to help out in the kitchen just as I was expected to. And my mother had a life. My mother had a job. She started off and sort of rose through the ranks and she became the head of the university's administrative unit, entire administrative unit, which I'm so proud of. She was the first woman to do that at the University of Nigeria.

17:28Incredible Women Host:And my parents had a friendship, you know, there was respect there. So I think all of those things really influenced the way I looked at the world. I was never sort of giving a lecture about, you know, you are as equal as a boy. No. And quite frankly, there are things about which we disagreed. My parents, both of them, I think if you ask them, do you believe in feminism? I think they would have said, no, thank you. Because that word is so loaded with, but I think in general, I would say that both of my parents were actually sort of 85%, you know, on board with feminist ideas. So being raised by them, yes, was really important.

18:09Incredible Women Host:I think also that just watching the world, you know, and I'll be taken to the market when I was quite young to get my hair braided. And those market women who they're shouting, they're arguing, they're braiding hair, I found them so inspirational because, you know, I would listen to their stories And I just found them actually to be the sort of real frontier of feminism. Often they had abusive husbands. They were raising their children alone. They were paying their children's school fees from the little money they made from braiding hair. They sometimes would sell hair attachments and hair beads.

18:47Incredible Women Host:And there was just always this striving and this authenticity and this sort of singularity of their life. There's just something about women like that that just deeply inspired me. And taught me very early, I think, that education is very important, of course. But sometimes even education fails women. There's some women who are very well educated, but somehow are still unable to stand up for themselves. And there are many who are not educated who can. So those women were influential. And of course, the books I read were influential. Flora Mwapa, who was the first Igbo woman to publish fiction in English, was a feminist.

19:27Incredible Women Host:But again, I don't think she would have said that she was. You could tell that she believed that women were just equally as human as men. And her stories meant a lot to me.

19:39Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:Well, now speaking about the brilliant women in your own novels, particularly in Dream Count, your protagonist, Chia, she has PMDD and fibroids. Why was that something that you wanted to draw awareness to? Because it was something that deeply resonated with me and I'm grateful for you for including that in your storytelling.

20:01Incredible Women Host:Well, apart from my having PMDD and fibroids, there were other reasons. But this is true, though. And I do think it's important to talk about women's bodies. I think women's bodies shape so much of women's lives. And I've often joked about reading many, many novels in which, you know, women are the major characters. And I never come across the mention of a period. And I know in my life how much my periods have shaped every damn thing. I did a shoot not long ago and the stylist had sent a message to my team to say, what's her size? And they asked me and I said, well, it depends on the time of the month.

20:43Incredible Women Host:Oh, quite. Right. So sometimes things sort of get swollen and bloated. What are we talking about? But I think it's important. I've had experiences, obviously, fibroids. I had to have surgery years ago because I had a huge fibroid that was just really getting in the way of my life. I was bleeding terribly. I was throwing up. And again, often as right as we write, what we wish we saw more of in fiction. And I wish that, it's interesting to think about all of the themes that we have come to accept as sort of valid in literature. But this fundamental thing, I mean, we all came from a woman's body and the complexity of a woman's body and women's health, still quite, you know, I think we need to see more of that in literature.

21:32Incredible Women Host:And not in the way that we categorize it as not quite as important and we see women's fiction, but as mainstream literature, I think it benefits all of us as a human race. We need to know more. And in that way, my hope is that women get the help they need. You know, right now, modern medicine can do things with that just exquisite, complicated brain that we have as human beings. But somehow we haven't figured out what to do for PMDD. We haven't figured out perimenopause. We haven't figured out really menopause because women still have to go through a lot of trial and error. Women are suffering.

22:11Incredible Women Host:And I'm not saying this in a kind of activist, let's bring it to light way, but really more in a sort of human way. This is our story. And so it should be told.