The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture located in Harlem, New York, recently hosted Chimamanda Adiche and Zadie Smith where both talked about their works and the role of women in their fiction.
The center is recognised as one of the leading institutions focusing exclusively on African-American, African Diaspora, and African experiences. It began with the collections of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg more than 85 years ago. The Schomburg has collected, preserved, and provided access to materials documenting black life — in America and worldwide. It has also promoted the study and interpretation of the history and culture of peoples of African descent.
Zadie Smith is no newcomer in the world of literature. Her first novel, White Teeth, which has background of Second World War in it, was published in 2000 and received a lot of accolades in her country Britain and around the world while another of her novels, On Beauty, won the Orange prize for fiction a year before Adiche won with her novel Half of A Yellow Sun.
Smith asked Adiche why there are lots of strong women in her fiction and Adiche in her response to that said they were about the women she knows, though not all women she knows are strong like her female characters. She also said she has always been dutiful with other of her works by the rules of creative writing but with Americanah she wanted how she felt. Another thing Adiche said during the event was that she is very much interested in class, that is why she writes about it.
Smith made a funny comment that made the audience laugh that when she was reading Americanah she realized that the African Americans in the book didn’t have class and the way Nigerians behave in the novel, that made her remember her years of growing up in London being from Jamaican decent when there were arguments among Jamaicans in London, they criticise themselves by saying, “Look at Nigerians, look at how they behave. You won’t see them behave like that.” She wondered now if that was stereotype or that was a single story of Nigerians which her family or many Jamaicans haven’t seen. Smith said every Nigerian in London says they are Prince, “and we have no evidence not to believe so”.
The session ended with questions from the audience. One of it was if Ifemelu did like American Race and not satisfied with America. Adiche’s response to that was maybe, and that was why she went home.
