Chimamanda wows Kenyan fans at launch & talks hair :-)

 

The award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 36, is in Kenya for a week of book launches, public lectures and a gala dinner to mark Kwani Trust 10th Year Anniversary.

"The best part about #KwaniAt10 is the fact that they got Chimamanda (Adichie) to come," tweeted popular literary blogger, Wamathai.

A sentiment many a book lover shares of the Nigerian author whose pen stroke is said to increasingly resemble her idol, the late Chinua Achebe.

Kwani Trust, describing itself as a Kenyan-based literary network dedicated to developing quality creative writing and committed to the growth of the creative industry, couldn't have picked a better guest to fly in.

Perhaps her degree in Communications and Masters in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University would be more palatable to her following in light of who she has become - Africa's daughter and much acclaimed teller of tales.To the world, she is a sight to behold. When she checked into the Westhouse Hotel on Wednesday evening, this age-defying, chocolate-skinned personification of calmness had no airs about her.

In her flat ballerina shoes, comfortable pants and orange top, Chimamanda looked every inch like the girl next door; making easy conversation with the hotel aids at her disposal.

The day that followed saw her join the who's who in Nairobi along with the Kwani Trust Board of Trustees over dinner with only the slim Mathari River sweeping between them and the Karura Forest.

When she took to the podium, the short time that was hers was spent between her hair reflections, a reading from Americanah, her latest novel set in both Nigeria and the United States and, abounding praise for a Kenyan author, Yvonne Adhiambo Ouwor, whose novel she is reading with great intrigue.

Of hair, she expressed her marvel in Nairobi's women who wear their hair natural.

She called it "inspiring" that after every weave-wearing lady she came across, one with an Afro do would come along making it seem "equally normal", much to her delight.
Hair is no small conversation for Chimamanda. In her Channel 4 interview earlier this year, she called it a "political thing" one by which people make assumptions and that society through the media had taken the liberty to define straight hair as what constitutes beautiful.

"When you look at women's magazines, and these things matter and what is on television, what the society tells us is beautiful, its straight hair. And so we have young girls growing up with that in their heads. It’s something I want to talk about, I want to address and want to challenge". 

In her latest novel, Americanah, she touches on the hair issue - weaving it into her picture of the complexity of cross cultural relationships.

Americanah was launched in Kenya yesterday, November 29 alongside Yvonne Adhiambo Ouwor's debut novel, Dust.

It took her five years to write Americanah and, believe it or not, she still wants to make changes in the book. "I'm a slow writer.It takes me a while to be happy with a sentence. I do a lot of rewriting and revising. I'm a bit obsessive," she admitted in an interview, her alto thinly laced in her native accent.

Obsessive or not, Chimamanda is loved and her titles hailed as ‘unputdownable’, to say the least; wooing the reader's mind into her world of Fufu among other Enugu favourites.

An ardent reader at the event claimed to have learned Igbo words from her trips down the pages Chimamanda wrote and while she is convinced that Half of A Yellow Sun is the best title yet, she's keen to check out Americanah.

It’s that sense of belonging that she carries with her in her title and her outfits that makes her a darling of the continent. Not so much the 19 awards and nominations to her name, dating back to 2002.


















By Njeri Kihang'ah
 Photos by Associated Press