Introduction

Introduction to Chimamanda Adichie: A Research Guide

This research guide is meant for early career researchers interested in the life and work of Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. It was written by fifteen undergraduate students — almost exclusively English Literature, Creative Writing, Global Studies, and Gender and Women’s Studies majors — at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana. These students were enrolled in my upper-level English Literature seminar called Contemporary Voices: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and throughout the semester, while they read, discussed, and wrote about Adichie’s fiction and nonfiction writing, they collaboratively created this text.

The guide is organized into four major sections: Part 1: Biographical and Background Information; Part 2: Terms and Themes; Part 3: Bibliography; and Part 4: Critical Analyses. The purpose of these sections is to provide pertinent contextual information for readers and scholars of Adichie’s work, point readers and researchers of Adichie’s work toward useful primary and secondary sources, and engage readers and researchers with critical analyses that engage with a broad range of issues across Adichie’s body of work. Part 1 addresses pertinent information about Adichie’s life and also about Nigerian culture and history, which inform much of her writing. Part 2 provides a glossary of relevant terms and brief descriptions of some of the most prevalent themes that emerge in Adichie’s fiction and nonfiction writing. The “Suggested Reading” section in Part 3 lists all of Adichie’s major publications and a carefully curated collection of other writing about Adichie, including peer-reviewed literary criticism. In addition, it includes the works that are cited in Parts 1 and 2 of this text. Finally, Part 4 contains five essays about Adichie’s work written by undergraduate scholars from my seminar.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has changed the landscape of Anglophone literature, and she continues to influence her readers both through her published writing and as an active public intellectual with a compelling social media presence. Like most influential people, she has faced public scrutiny, most recently over her problematic position on transgender identity. However, the value of her work is far reaching, and engagement with all of her ideas encourages us to think more deeply about our own — an important intellectual exercise. Readers and researchers of her work should approach it in the same way they would the texts of any great literary figure: with curiosity and a critical eye. We hope this text serves those of you undertaking that work.

Ann Marie A. Short

Notre Dame, IN

July 2021