The Courage to Tell the Story: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie '08 Reflects at the Coca-Cola World Lecture
“I knew very early on in life that I did not want the things I was supposed to want,” acclaimed Nigerian writer and activist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ’08 declared at this year’s Coca-Cola World Lecture Fund. These opening words framed Adichie’s explanation of her writing journey—highlighting how, for her, being a writer lies in the rejection of the status quo.
Hosted by the Yale Macmillan Center and the Council on African Studies, Adichie reflected on her family roots, the role of language and culture in her work, and her journey of writing as an African woman. A graduate of Yale's M.A. program in African Studies, she has since authored numerous bestselling novels, including Americanah and Half of a Yellow Sun. She is also widely recognized for her influential TED talks “The Danger of A Single Story” (2009) and “We Should All Be Feminists” (2012).
The lecture opened with Adichie discussing her upbringing and the “steadfastness and joyousness” of her parents’ love, which she credits with shaping her early sensibilities as a writer. Her father, a professor of statistics, and her mother, a university administrator, raised their family on the campus of the University of Nigeria, an environment that nurtured her curiosity from an early age.
Writing, she noted, has shaped every part of who she is. She recalled a vivid childhood memory: “I’m sitting in the backseat of my mother's car as we drove to the market, and I'm looking out of the window, and suddenly I feel an intense pang of melancholy, because what I saw through the window as we drove was stories, and I knew that I would not be able to tell them all.” That realization, she suggested, helped ground her lifelong devotion to storytelling and her view that fiction is a place to explore truth rather than follow ideology.
Language and identity were also central themes of the talk. She recounted an early moment in her publishing career, when the editor of her first novel advised her to remove non-English words because “it would confuse American readers.” English, she said, is “a thing imposed on you, but which you now own,” and she described how classroom restrictions on speaking Igbo shaped her understanding of linguistic identity. She spoke to the tragedy of sidelining one’s native language—and the renewed pride in Igbo culture that she has reclaimed over time.
Novels should never be ideologically correct, because life is never ideologically correct. Novels should be truth, and truth is messy.
The conversation then shifted to the question of what it means to write as an African author. Drawing on themes such as her complicated relationship with Roman Catholicism, the anti-colonial struggle, and faith, Adichie emphasized that “all fiction is political simply because the writing does not exist in a vacuum.” At the same time, she noted that the tendency to read African literature primarily as anthropology or political allegory can overshadow its human dimensions. She ultimately suggested that being an African writer today involves recognizing that stories are vital tools for resisting the shaping of African aspirations and narratives by non-African actors.
The lecture concluded with a reflection on the nature of the novel itself. “Novels should never be ideologically correct, because life is never ideologically correct. Novels should be truth, and truth is messy,” Adichie remarked.
Following her talk, she joined a Q&A session moderated by Cajetan Iheka, Chair of the Council on African Studies. Students asked about the role of elegance in her writing and the stylistic expectations she navigates when crafting her novels. In her responses, Adichie spoke about the value of poetry and prose within fiction and underscored the importance of telling the story one feels compelled to tell.
“It was pure joy and inspiring to witness her assert Africa's centrality in the world and validate the continent's stories,” Iheka shared about the event. “Her advice to students to write with confidence and unapologetically is one that will resonate for a long time.
Founded in 1958, the Council on African Studies encourages the study of Africa at Yale by promoting educational and scholarly exchange through various projects, degree programs, and events open to the Yale and New Haven community.
Since 1992, the Coca-Cola World Lecture Fund has supported major public figures to deliver annual lectures on matters of international significance since 1992.
Story written by Thy Luong '28, student writer for the MacMillan Center.