1.1: Personal Information

Early Life

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian American writer, activist, and feminist. She was born September 15, 1977 in Enugu, Nigeria (Luebering). Adichie is the fifth of six children born to a middle-class Igbo family (Tuncan). Adichie’s parents, James Nwoye Adichie and Grace Ifeoma, both made strides working in higher education. Adichie’s father was a professor turned Deputy Vice Chancellor, and her mother was a registrar, both at the University of Nigeria. Adichie’s ancestors hail from Abba in Anambra State. Adichie grew up in Nsukka, in the house formerly belonging to the renowned Nigerian author, Chinua Achebe. The Adichie family lived there comfortably, hiring domestic workers to keep their home in good condition. Adichie’s mother would send food and clothes to their young house worker’s family because his family was not as fortunate as Adichie’s (Adichie, “The Danger of a Single Story”). Although Adichie grew up in flourishing conditions, her family history was detrimentally impacted by the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran war of 1966-1970 (Rushton). Born seven years later, Adichie lived in the “shadow” of the conflict. Adichie’s immediate family suffered as a result of the war, with both her grandfathers perishing in refugee camps as Igbo Nigerians. This facet of Adichie’s heritage would later influence her writings.

Growing up, Adichie avidly enjoyed reading. Her mother claimed Adichie began reading at the early age of two years old, but Adichie believes it was probably closer to four years old (Adichie, “The Danger of a Single Story”). Adichie began writing at the age of seven. In her adulthood, she realized that her characters did not actually reflect her own identity or cultural experiences. This disconnect stemmed from British and American writings shaping her literary worldview. In her TED Talk, “The Danger of a Single Story,” Adichie reflected on how her “characters were white and blue-eyed, they played in the snow, they ate apples…[and her] characters also drank a lot of ginger beer, because the characters in the British books [she] read drank ginger beer. Never mind that [she] had no idea what ginger beer was.” Adichie was finally able to see herself in literature when she discovered African writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye. This familiarity helped Adichie form her own craft in writing.

Present Day

Today, Adichie splits her time between living in Nigeria and the United States. Her Lagos based writing workshop is named after her first novel: Purple Hibiscus Creative Writing Workshop (Tuncan). She is married to Ivara Esege, whom she wed in 2009. Esege is a family medicine and immediate care physician, as well as an assistant professor of Family Medicine at the University of Maryland (Dr. Ivara A. Esege, MD). Much like his wife, Esege was born and raised in Nigeria. Adichie and Esege have one daughter, who was born in 2016. Esege and Adichie kept her pregnancy out of the public eye and off social media to avoid having to publicly “perform pregnancy” (Van Amburg). Further information about Adichie and her nuclear family is limited, as she values and strives to maintain their privacy.

Adichie’s family has received more attention due to her fame and influence. In 2015, her father, James Nwoye Adichie, was kidnapped as part of a ransom plot (MacFarquhar). Mr. Adichie’s driver helped stage the kidnapping. Of the group of kidnappers, only the driver was later caught and charged with the crime. The assailants left Mr. Adichie in a forest for three days. The Adichie family paid the ransom in order to have James returned to them. After the kidnapping, Mr. Adichie moved to his hometown of Abba.

James Nwoye Adichie passed away suddenly from kidney failure at the age of 88 in June of 2020 (Corrigan). Adichie writes about his passing in her 2020 essay, “Notes on Grief.” This poetic essay highlights her father’s life. Additionally, Adichie details the heart wrenching experience of losing a loved one during the Covid-19 lockdown with family members scattered across the globe. Less than a year after her father’s passing, Adichie received news of her mother, Grace Ifeoma’s unexpected death. This news arrived in March 2021, while the expanded version of “Notes On Grief” was in the press for a May 11, 2021 release date. “How does a heart break twice?” Adichie rhetorically questioned in an online post regarding her mother’s death (qtd. in Corrigan).

Faith and Feminism

In 2017, Adichie reflected on her religious upbringing and her current religious beliefs at a Faith and Culture Lecture Series at Georgetown University. Although raised in the Catholic faith, Adichie decided to leave the Catholic Church before Pope Benedict XVI was inaugurated in 2005. Her decision to leave the Catholic Church is connected to her feminist views. “For me, and not just Catholicism, I think religion … is not a women-friendly institution,” she said. “Religion has been used to justify oppressions that are based on the idea that women are not equal human beings.” However, Adichie has been drawn back to the Catholic Church, especially through Pope Francis’ teachings. Adichie baptized her daughter as a Catholic and has indicated that through her daughter’s birth she reconnected to her childhood faith. “The presence of God is greatest in love,” she said, referring to the feeling she gets when holding her daughter. “Even when she was born, there’s just something deeply magical and something that makes me think there has to be something more” (Georgetown University).