Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on Why Book Bans Don’t Work and Other Reflections

0:06This is The Run Through. I'm Chloe Mel. And I'm Choma Nardi. Choma, I am so excited for you to hear today's interview. Our books and cultures are, Chloe Shoma and I, got to speak with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in anticipation of her new novel, Dream Count, which has been so hotly anticipated. Chloe edited Chimamanda's beautiful piece in the March issue, and they loved working together. And Choma, you're a Chimamanda fan, no? Yes, I am a huge Chimamanda fan. And in fact, when I met her at an event, I burst into tears in front of her because it was like really moving. She has a very calm, wise, you're almost like you're in the presence of like an oracle with her because she just has this such a regal presence.

0:53Like it's it's totally enthralling. So I just basically told her that the book that she wrote called Half of a Yellow Sun, I've read. I haven't read a new book. I've read almost all of her books. and it's about the the civil war in in Nigeria the Abafran war and I just told her like it made me understand my father because I my dad wouldn't talk about the civil war wow so there was a side of him that I just you know that was I guess locked away and in that moment I just I just burst into tears was she comforting she was super comforting she held my hand we were gonna get coffee like I was like I think she probably offered coffee because I was like literally like in a puddle um but yeah like I think as far as like celebrity interactions go that might have been like the most embarrassing slash like sweet and amazing because like yeah I think I I sort of realized as I was saying it like wow like this experience that you um articulated and such you sort of like described in such a beautiful way in this book um helped me understand my family better and i think that's like such a powerful thing i'm so glad you guys had that experience yeah it was it was it was really great so i'm so excited to hear about um uh the conversation that that you and chloe had um with with chimamanda i i read the short story and obviously like you know in the space of like i don't know how many words is like 2000 very short story.

2:23She just talks about her first love and it's just so powerful. And such a vivid picture of a place and time. Yeah, it was just so evocative. And I can't wait for people to read this story. It's so great. I'm so thrilled that you guys managed to persuade her to write something and something so personal. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm just fascinated by her. I mean, I realized that she just had twin boys. I know. No one knew that until this Guardian interview last weekend. She has twin babies and a nine-year-old daughter. And I really related to the way she's spoken about motherhood and both mourning her own mother's death and reconciling the impact of motherhood on her own work.

3:12You know, she said in one interview that I could probably have written two novels had I not had my child, which I found so striking and refreshing to hear someone admit that. Well, yeah, I mean, it's like people don't acknowledge the fact that like motherhood is a full time job. It's just crazy. We can't overstate that. Let's hear Choma about your London Fashion Week. Yeah, it was really fun. It sort of kicked off with S.S. Daly, who's a wonderful, primarily a menswear designer, who also has backing from Harry Styles. So I think everyone's always excited for his shows. And it was a really fabulous kickoff to the week on Thursday.

3:51and then there were like a few really amazing standouts of the week. I thought Juara Alain, who's famously dressed Rihanna and many others, did a fantastic show. And there were also a couple of really standout presentations, which I was excited about. Give us an example. One is Tolu Koka, who basically recreated her studio in the show space and then had kind of like a band outside. So you had the show atelier that she'd completely she's brought all of her team and she set up this like basically you saw what her studio looked like. And she had the clothes in their inspiration boards. It was almost like like peeling back the curtain on the process.

4:32And then on the outside. So you imagine a box in the middle that was a studio. And then on the outside, she had like this this band playing kind of like I think she's influenced by like church Sunday church style. And so she had a kind of an organ player. and it was really well done. I think it's hard to make impact with presentations. You know, I think that a lot of young designers don't always have the resources to do a show and sometimes it doesn't make sense for them and I think she made a really good case for it. Another name, everybody's talking about Talia Burr. Oh, I don't know who that is.

5:06She's a young designer. She hasn't done a show as yet and she's been doing more like appointments and she did a fabulous lookbook. A lot of her kind of twisted stripes, is like twisted stripes are kind of like her signature. Oh, we like twisted stripes. Yes. And then, of course, Erdem, who showed at the British Museum and collaborated with an artist on these really beautiful painterly watercolor prints. Yeah, they almost looked hand-painted. I know they were prints, but it was so visceral looking. The collection itself was so textured and, like, tactile. There were so many different, like, it was such a textured and rich collection.

5:44And there were lots of amazing knits. I loved all the kind of like floral knits. I had like threads kind of trailing. Simone Rochard showed on the same day. I loved her ribbon, a sort of trailing ribbon dresses. And she had such a fabulous cast. And then on the Monday, of course, it was like a fashion week finished off with a real bang. Burberry took over the Tate Britain and had these huge drapes going the length of the museum. And this like rich, raw blue carpet. And it was very much like an exploration of English eccentricity and that kind of like English born of the manor kind of salt burn vision of British style.

6:23But make it now with major cameos, major cameo. I mean, obviously, Leslie Manville has to get a shout out. Richard E. Grant carrying an umbrella that I wish I had to take home now. Lots of like plaids, brocade suits, lots of great outerwear, like these leather parkas that I was obsessed with. And then, yeah, I mean, Naomi Campbell walked. You had Christy Hoon. It was like Karen Elson, who looked heavenly. Lila Moss. It was a really epic casting, epic front row. I mean, Lauryn Hill showed up with a scarf wrapped around her head. Oh, my God. I saw that on your Instagram story and on the Vogue app.

7:02And she was so amazing because she had like this little fan because it was actually quite a warm, muggy evening. It's not very cold here in the UK. And she had a little handheld fan in that she was like using the entire time because she was really swaddled in all of these very thick woolen plaids. But anything for the look. She looked incredible. And she sat next to La Roche. Who else was there? I mean, it was a really star-studded event. Orlando Bloom. You know, I mean, London doesn't have as many of the bigger shows. So Burberry always feels like this is the epic finale. And so that was really fun.

7:40And then obviously woke up and saw that Dochi opened D Squared, which I thought was such a timely move for them because. amazing yeah like how incredible to have the star of the moment open your show and I love that they also had I think it was their anniversary social they introduced some collaborators into the mix they had for carers who's a New York brand that I adore so they they did some collaboration so they invited some younger designers into the process I thought it was very cool I can't remember the last time we were like raving about a d squared show so I thought it was really fun What else, Choma?

8:16You're not in Milan, but what else have you seen from Milan that you were interested in? I mean, we saw we saw Gucci that the Ancora Red was obviously Sabato's signature and we saw the entire room turn green and it was a studio showing. I thought it was a very kind of respectful continuation of of the sort of Gucci codes. and major white lotus stars on the runway. Oh, yeah. Well, actually, yes, in one case, but a lot of front row white lotus moments. Alessandro Nivola, who plays the young son. Parker Posey was at Gucci. There's some other stars that are going to be trickling out through Milan and Paris.

9:01Hannah actually wrote a fun story about that. And then, as you were saying, at Burberry, Jason Isaacs, who plays the aggrieved Southern financier father on the show, walked in the Burberry show. I have been too busy between Fashion Week and BAFTA to watch any episodes, so I'm saving all of my White Lotus episodes, but I'm dying. That's so smart because then you get to watch them in a clump, and I am really, it's so sad to be done. I've become so spoiled by binge watching. I know. I know. I'm just going to get the popcorn out and one Sunday afternoon and just watch the entire series. Well, it's very good this season and everyone here is talking about it and all the different threads there.

9:48Some of the Vogue.com obsessions are Amy Lou Wood's teeth. Flying the flag for the UK. We love characterful teeth. uh whether or not walton goggins is um an attractive man very very divisive in our gen z gen millennial divide um and also whether or not girls trips are always destined for failure what do people think of the fashion so far the fashion we did a story with the costume designer And it does it feels very on brand and on trend with with sort of Thailand rich, rich bohemian vacation dressing. But what we're really talking about is the oversaturation of White Lotus collaborations. They really took a page out of the Wicked handbook.

10:42And it seems like everyone and their mother is doing a White Lotus collaboration from Banana Republic to Away Luggage. Yeah, we're going to actually, we're having Emma Spector try out all of the different White Lotus collaborations. Oh, my goodness. I'm excited for that. Send me the link when it goes live. The SAG Awards were last Sunday. The Indie Spirits were on Saturday. This week is the Brit Awards, the Cesar Awards, and as the ultimate end to the award season marathon, the Oscars on Sunday. There's a lot happening in Los Angeles. and speaking of the Oscars we will all be watching and then we will all be chatting about it very early the next morning so that you can get in there right away listen to our favorite outfits the wins, the misses, the snubs so please tune in do you have any Oscars predictions, feelings, desires things, dresses you would like to see on the red carpet people you'd like to see win?

11:49Timothy Chalamet was sort of the dark horse to win the sack to scoop the sag and that apparently statistically like whoever wins a sag best actor usually wins an Oscar and we've all been talking about Adrian being the sort of like out and out favorite for that Oscar award. so I'm sort of curious to see if like Timothy's just gonna upend the entire system I'm actually going to the Brits with a special guest this this weekend and we're styling a very special guest and I'm going with her so I can talk about that next week I'm very excited so yeah so the team's the the team is has pulled some amazing things and we have a fitting on Friday so with one of the performers so it'll be really fun and we're gonna we're gonna attend together I've never been So I'm sort of excited for that.

12:39Oh, that's exciting. Yeah. The Brits for anyone who doesn't know is kind of like the Grammys of the UK. I know. Our British colleague today was like, oh, how are we feeling about covering the Brits? I was like, just generally British people? And she was like, okay, that answers my question. Hilarious. Hilarious. Yeah. I think the digital team, and I'm sure you can sympathize, are flat out. They've just had a start. You guys have had such a long run. It's like this one award show after the other. I'd totally forgotten about the Indie Spirit Awards. I was like, how did that creep up? I know. And then two days after the Oscars is this Louvre Museum gala event.

13:21Yeah, what are your thoughts on this? I'm like, I'm wondering like how epic it's going to be. Like I know they're trying to rival the Met Gala, obviously isn't everyone. But I wonder like what it's going to be. Are there co-hosts? Do we know anything? Do we have a sense of like who? We are waiting on information. It sounds like, and as a background for people who are not in our Slack channels, the Louvre Museum in Paris recently opened their first ever fashion exhibition in history, which is a big deal. And that opened in January, I believe around January Couture Week. And now at the beginning of Paris Fashion Week, there is a big, elaborate, dramatic, star-studded gala dinner to celebrate that exhibition.

14:10And it is black tie. There is a major guest list. A lot of houses are dressing people. It feels like it's going to be a very glamorous evening. It's called Le Grand Diner du Louvre. And I think that the photos I've seen from the exhibition look amazing. I'm excited to see it. I hope I get a chance to do so. Choma, next week we will be united in Paris. I'm so excited. Yeah, me too. Me too. I feel like what a better place to rendezvous than in Paris, huh? And Choma, I was so excited. I did. I joined, I had a meeting yesterday morning with Millie Tritton, our intrepid colleague who is sort of the train conductor for all of our international content sharing.

15:01And she was like, oh, I'm sorry, I'm on a sugar high because we all just had delicious treats for celebrating Choma's one year anniversary of 12 covers at British Vogue. I was so moved. I actually wanted to cancel the meeting, but I was told I couldn't cancel it because I didn't know about the surprise. So it was sort of really wonderful. The team surprised me with cupcakes and a card printed with all of the 12 covers. And it was kind of like an emotional moment to look back and be like, wow, damn, it's been 12. It's been 12 issues, which is like, you know, it's like you have to do you have to do that.

15:37That year, that year of issues feels like really monumental. So it was a really good feeling. So it was nice. Aw. All right. Well, that is the news of the week. The Run-Through will be back in a moment.

16:11Little Gold Men takes you behind the scenes of the race for the biggest prize in Hollywood. There's a hundred wrestlers in the room, but only one can be Oscar nominated. Whether you're a movie lover or an industry buff, Little Gold Men from Vanity Fair has everything you need to know about this year's Oscar race. Follow and listen to Little Gold Men wherever you get your podcasts.

16:42And we are back with Chmimanda Ngozi Adichie.

16:48I know I speak for the entire Vogue team when I say how much we loved your essay featured in our March issue. It's called The Story of My First Love, and it's describing the puppy love you experienced with your first boyfriend and then, sadly, his unexpected death. Can you tell us a little more about what it was like to revisit that part of your life? I've actually written about him before, years ago, a long time ago, a much longer essay that was also about sort of the phenomenon of the rising phenomenon of armed robberies in Nigeria. But it just kind of made me go back in a way that I hadn't in a while and write about it in a different way, because I do think that there is something about that first love.

17:36I think there's something about first love in general. Sometimes it's not a wonderful experience for people. Mine was until it wasn't. And I think also just that idea that you kind of know intellectually that this relationship was done. But because this person has this horrible, tragic end, in some ways I think memory then turns things around. And suddenly there's a kind of, in addition to obviously sorrow and grief, there's a kind of nostalgia for something that will never be. and I'm a person who's kind of addicted to nostalgia. It takes me very little to become very nostalgic, but this one in particular, I mean, I, yes, I wrote about it in a way that's different from how I have written about it in the past.

18:21And I also felt quite moved at the end. And I, and I kind of hope that I was also in some ways paying tribute to him. Actually, what's been lovely is that there are people who have been in touch with me since it came out, people I went to secondary school with and who told their own stories about him, some I didn't even know about. So that's also kind of that's also kind of been lovely. Yeah. I want to know about being photographed by Annie Leibovitz and being styled for your Vogue shoot, because I loved those photos so much. They felt so personal and true to you and also so glamorous and very Vogue.

18:59It was like this perfect mixture of what you wanted the images to be. Had you worked with Annie before? What was that experience like? Yes, Annie actually had photographed me before about 10 years ago. And she came here to our house. But I remember even then that she was just very human. And this shoot, I just loved. I think that it's wonderful when you're working with a photographer who thinks of you not as an object to be photographed but as a human being so Annie really wanted to talk about where I was and I just really appreciated that but also um what I was also struck by I mean Annie's this iconic figure but she just really cared that about what I thought about what we were doing and I remember thinking I don't know anything about photography you shouldn't care about what I think yeah but um but no it was lovely and Eric Rick, the stylist, was just the loveliest person.

19:57He's wonderful. I just thought it was lovely. The whole thing was lovely. And his team was lovely. Really, yeah, it was. And I love the pictures. I really do. I don't usually like pictures of myself. I'm always looking at pictures of myself, looking for something to dislike. And in this case, I found very little. Your last novel, Americana, was published 2013. And you've published several nonfiction works since then. But you've also had three children. And I wonder, I feel like whenever I've written fiction, it's so world consuming that how, what is that transition in and out of their world and into this world you're creating like?

20:36It is strange. I, you know, actually, I think I started to feel that expression writer's block is one I detest, but one must use it because it's just the easiest way to express that inability to write fiction. Fiction is the love of my life. And when I got pregnant, my daughter, my daughter is nine now, I just felt that something happened in my brain and I just could no longer write fiction. And I struggled for quite a while. And it felt like being shut out of yourself because I think that the truest self that I have is a self that writes fiction. and I couldn't reach that self. And so really the only way I can think about my finally getting back to writing is a kind of joyous reunification with the self.

21:26And it just made me so happy. But having children also means that you don't have as much time to devote to the work. And I'm a writer who's quite obsessive. So when I'm inside my fiction, I don't want to do anything else. And until I had my daughter, that worked out well. But then with my daughter, because really romantic love was never a problem. I could always put it aside to focus on my fiction, but I realized that maternal love, but I think it's also that a part of me is terrified that my daughter will grow up and say my mother's writing was more important than me. And so I have a rule with her where she can come in whenever she wants when I'm walking.

22:04And I gave her that rule, hoping that she would not take me up on it very often. Sadly, she does. So there are times when I've sort of had to leave home and go lock myself up somewhere for a few days at a time, especially when I'm going through a difficult time in the writing process. But you know what? I also find that actually, I feel so fortunate to be a mother, really, because they have given me, I think there's a, I'm a different writer because I'm a mother. There's a kind of, I think, a new plane of understanding. And I think it's a higher plane of understanding and access to certain kinds of emotions.

22:43And it's made me different. And I think really, I think better just having them. And I have babies, so that's even more interesting. Yeah. I also I wonder, as you said, it felt like you were locked out of a certain part of yourself not being able to write fiction for a long time. What was the key that reopened that for you? Do you know, I don't actually know. I mean, I started writing after my mother died. Which was in 2021? Yes, yes. And so some parts of this book had been floating in my head for years, but I actually started writing this novel knowing I was writing the novel after my mother died.

23:25And I don't know, I wasn't conscious of it at the time, but I think that there is a sense in which it was maybe my, maybe it was my mother. Maybe it was my mother that unlocked the door for me. We've been talking a lot at Vogue about the five-year anniversary of the beginning of the COVID lockdowns and just sort of reflecting on that time. And it did feel like for the characters in the novel that that is a sort of an important set piece and unlocking in many ways of different nostalgias and revisiting things. Was that an experience that you had for the beginning of COVID as well? Yeah, I think that's really true about COVID being...

24:04I felt in a literary sense that COVID is kind of like this wide, almost blank canvas on which you can sort of impose all sorts of different permutations of human response, I think. And COVID was such a strange, surreal thing that none of us had ever experienced. I mean, nobody alive has ever experienced a proper universal plague. And so to go through that, I remember my experience was the first few weeks was just one of just utter surrealness. And I was at home here in the U.S. with my daughter. and my husband is a doctor, so he was walking. Oh, wow. And I was always terrified that he would bring it home and especially terrified for my daughter.

24:48And then my father died. My father died weeks into lockdown. So the lockdown then became for me this intense grieving period. And it's very strange to grieve when the world is grieving and also when the world is shut down. It just, it really was a very surreal time for me. So in a literary sense, it's also very rich with sort of literary possibility and material. In some ways, COVID is the foundation on which the stories then kind of rise or fall. I liked what you said about maternal love making your kind of understanding of yourself and your writing richer. And it resonated, I think, because I was fine that there's an overblown dichotomy between the mother and the artist and can the two coexist.

25:37Yeah. However, I will say. But this is the thing. I don't really know that we ask about fatherhood and art. It's totally true. We do not. No. And it's not fair. Yeah. It's not fair. That's the point. I mean, and obviously, I'm not suggesting that it's the same thing. Fatherhood is not motherhood, right? We know that. But I just think that if women are going to be constantly asked, and they should be because it's important, then perhaps you should ask fathers as well. Anyway, go on. Go on, Chloe. Well, I was going to say, I guess, that despite the overblown attention paid to mothers and artists, do you have rituals, routines that help you carve out time for both being a mother and an artist?

26:22No, I've never, I've always wanted to be that writer, you know, who has a routine. But no, you know, no, I don't. I think, if anything, it's really just about, there's certain things I'm very clear about. I have to have time with my children every day. when I'm home. And, um, and so I, and I don't, it doesn't have, it doesn't really matter when I just, I, for me, it's, I make it happen. It has to happen. And I think part of it is just also, I think the anxiety that comes with that kind of love. Um, you know, I was joking, I was joking with my best friend earlier today and I said to her, I'm terrified of going on book tour next month because I'm worried that my babies won't know me when I come back.

27:03And it's just for a month and I'll be home a few days during the month. But it's a huge deal for me. Of course. Yeah, definitely. How does the character first take shape for you? Is it the name? Is it the place? Is it a combination of the two? And I'm personally curious, having read the book, if there was one character for this book that came to you first. It's always hard to answer these because I often say, and kind of half-jokingly, that I feel like I'm inventing things when I'm talking about how I wrote my fiction because so much of it is not entirely conscious. There's a lot that is... I think about things, obviously, but then there's a lot that's intuitive.

27:43So going back, I think I... Maybe Chia came to me first. Chia is the character who's sort of, we might say kind of the major character or four major characters. Out of the four major characters, she might be slightly more major. The first line of the novel has been floating in my head for many years. And so I think it came with a character like her. She's sort of dreamy and not very practical. And so I think maybe she came first. But generally, characters come to me in different ways. Sometimes it's mood. I don't always see them physically. Actually, if you asked me to describe some of them in detail, I might not be able to.

28:20But if you asked me to tell you how they would react to any situation, I would tell you. So I know them internally much more than I know them externally. and so they come to me as sometimes honestly as companion so as an idea of a person I'd like to have a conversation with for example which which I think is true for all all four of my major characters I would like to I'd like to talk to them I also want to talk about place you have a lot of Americana as a a woman who comes to America and experiences like a bit of a culture Clash, and there's a lot of diaspora themes in this new book. Did you have a handful of places you wanted to put your characters?