1.3: Adichie as Public Intellectual

TED Talks

Beyond her written work, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie achieved global recognition as a public intellectual through her TED Talks and other live appearances. Popular places to view her lectures include YouTube, Instagram Stories, Twitter, her official blog, and Vimeo (Encyclopædia Britannica). On YouTube, her TED Talks “The Danger of a Single Story” and “We Should all be Feminists” have been viewed a combined 14.7 million times. Her most famous lecture is her TED Talk, “The Dangers of a Single Story,” given in July of 2009. This talk has been prominently featured on YouTube, Vimeo and other popular worldwide platforms. On TED Talk’s official website, the video has received over 29 million views from all around the globe. It has also been translated into over 40 different languages. Another famous lecture, also given on the TED Talk platform, was “We Should All Be Feminists,'' which has been translated into 28 languages and viewed over 4.5 million times.

“The Danger of a Single Story” was initially delivered in a TED Talk in July 2009 (ted.com). This talk was later published on YouTube on October 19, 2009. The TED website describes “The Danger of a Single Story thusly: “Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice — and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding” (ted.com). These themes are common in Adichie’s works, as she relays her personal life experiences to bring awareness to voices that have been decentralized from canonical storytelling.

Adichie’s second impactful TED Talk, “We Should All be Feminists,” was live streamed in October 2013. This lecture aims to elucidate the stigmas surrounding feminism: “Adichie asks that we begin to dream about and plan for a different, fairer world — of happier men and women who are truer to themselves.” (ted.com). Her lectures transcend their original form, also making breaks in pop culture. Adichie expanded this TED Talk and adapted it into an essay titled under the same name, published on July 29, 2014 by Fourth Estate Publishing. Parts of Adichie’s “We Should All Be Feminists” were also featured in Beyoncé’s song “Flawless” (2013).

In addition to TED Talks, Adichie has appeared in numerous videos discussing her literature. She has also been featured on talk shows like “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah,” where she talked about raising her child as a feminist. She also highlighted the importance of African people partnering together to make a social change in the world and thanked Trevor Noah for doing his part.

Social Media Presence

Adichie’s lectures are distributed widely across her various social media platforms, reaching an expansive audience. Through social media, Adichie not only promotes her own literary work, but she promotes the works of writers who reflect her passion for knowledge and the pursuit of truth. Most of her posts involve topics such as feminism, women’s empowerment, feminist literature, and other forms of activism. Adichie uses social media to promote excellence in all of these areas.

Adichie has a vast and active following on social media. She uses social media accounts on all major platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and an official author’s website. She established her Facebook presence on September 28, 2008 and then created her Instagram account nine years later. She also has an official Twitter account that has remained inactive. Adichie is most active on Instagram where she posts two to three times a week. Her Instagram account has a cohort of nearly a million followers. As of June 2021, her following stands at 863k followers. Scrolling through Adichie’s Instagram account, there are 15 videos of her doing readings of her novels, and 362 posts of images.

In regards to promoting literature, Adichie uses her various social media platforms to promote her own works as well as uplift the works of others. On Instagram Adichie has said reading is knowledge and knowledge is power. In addition to posting photos of herself at events, with famous friends such as Lupita Nyong'o, and her everyday life, she actively creates posts pertaining to her works of literature. Not only does she post links to literary reads, but she also conducts live and recorded readings of her work to interact with her community of readers. Through this modality, she is again seeking to engage her cohort and enable them to fall in love with purposeful and meaningful literature. Her livestreams allow readers to ask her questions and actively communicate with her. This fosters a relationship between readers and the author as well as an expansive platform to reach international audiences.

Adichie also uses her Instagram platform to promote works of other present-day writers such as Carol Anderson’s White Rage, Margo Jefferson’s Negroland, and Ann Petry’s The Street. The majority of these works analyze or present a narrative based in the mid-20th century with the collective goal to unite “truth seekers and truth speakers” (Liang). Additionally, Adichie engages her social media followers through reading contests. She often posts links to short stories and offers cash prizes to her followers for reading and responding in the comments. For example, on February 10th 2021, she held a giveaway for her short story ‘Apollo,’ by using the hashtags: #StartReadingbyReading, #StartReadingbyReadingWithCNA and #ReadWithChimamanda. This form of outreach aims to promote an interest in literature, especially Nigerian literature and culture. In this vein, Adichie is promoting her own work while also creating an informed community of followers and cultivating within them a desire to read.

In addition to promoting literature, Adichie mobilizes her Instagram platform to support Nigerian fashion with #wearnigerian and #madeinnigeria tagged in most of her fashion-related posts. This use of her platform has cultivated conversation among her followers and encouraged them to likewise take pride in Nigerian and Kenyan-made fashion. Adichie has been able to create a space for all fans of her work to engage in conversation, keep up with her life, and form a community in an online public sphere. Through social media, Adichie’s overarching goal is to promote a love for literature and a love for Nigeria.

Overall, Adichie’s Instagram posts blend personal tidbits with global social justice activism. Images on her page include depictions of her speaking at events, graduations, and traveling back home to Nigeria. Followers are awarded a glimpse into her family life as she posts a couple of images of her daughter, as well as her father and mother after their deaths. Adichie’s social media is up to date with global issues like refugee limits in America, and how other countries are combating the COVID-19 pandemic. Oftentimes she publicly criticizes the leaders of countries she believes are poorly resolving social issues. As a result, Adichie’s followers spark conversations about race, politics, and gender. Because of the controversy Adichie receives, she often limits the comments on her post. There have been many impersonators of Adichie which has prompted Adichie to make official statements on verified social media accounts. Adichie uses her social media to promote her work and directly address social issues surrounding women’s empowerment, gender inequality, European beauty standards, misrepresentation of Africa, and other racial issues arising in the world.