November 6-12, 2003

books

Planting the Seeds

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie paints a torrid landscape of Nigerian politics and family with her debut novel.

by Deborah Bolling

Getting a book published is always considered a major achievement. But for Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, whose first novel, Purple Hibiscus (Algonquin, $23.95), has also earned the raves of literary critics, success is even sweeter when you’re only 25.

A product of Nigeria's upwardly mobile middle class, Adichie grew up in the 1980s, during the reign of General Ibrahim Babangida, one of West Africa's most notorious postcolonial military rulers. Raised by intellectual parents (both university lecturers) in a college town named Nsukka, Adichie admits that she was shielded from the spate of military coups that plagued her country during Babangida's controversial eight years. Nevertheless, she says it was impossible to ignore the turmoil around her.

"I didn't have to dodge any bullets," says Adichie, now living in Baltimore while completing graduate work at Johns Hopkins University. (Adichie was also a Philadelphia resident for two years as a communications major at Drexel University.) "Nsukka was a quiet, sleepy place that was very hilly. There were lovely roses in our garden, and we had a gardener and a driver. It was definitely a happy childhood. But growing up in Nigeria, politics have a tendency to creep into your life. Even teenagers talk about elections."

In Purple Hibiscus, Adichie chronicles the impact of politics and religion on a Nigerian family during civil war, as seen through the eyes of Kambili, a sheltered 15-year-old. Adichie's youthful heroine is from a wealthy family, dominated by a religiously zealous father who has denounced his own Igbo traditions in favor of European culture and Christianity. Under the threat of encroaching military violence, Kambili and her brother, Jaja, are sent to live with their father's sister, Aunty Ifeoma, a gregarious woman who still honors traditional African values. Purple Hibiscus examines the upheaval of both a family and a country.

Prior to the release of Purple Hibiscus, Adichie had already established herself internationally as a celebrated short story writer. Published in journals throughout Canada, England and the United States, she was most recently awarded the David T.K. Wong Short Story Award for Half of a Yellow Sun, a tale set during the Biafran War, which she says is the basis for her next novel. Adichie has also won writing awards from the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association and the BBC.

Although she says her novel is not autobiographical, Adichie's own experiences clearly help shape her storytelling.

"It's a true story, but not my own," she says. "The characters are completely made up, even though I do know people like those in my book. But, it's the themes of religion, politics and family that I'm most interested in exploring. So, I wrote about them."

One of the more interesting dichotomies explored in Purple Hibiscus is the strained relationship between traditional African religions and Christianity.

"Today there's a church on every street corner in Lagos," Adichie says, "but corruption continues to thrive. In my father's generation [because of the European colonizers], you couldn't be baptized until you'd taken a Christian name. Now, it is not westerners who are propagating this, but the Nigerians themselves. There is still a huge divide between people who are traditionalists -- those who have rejected Christianity -- and the majority on the other side, those who have been converted. For many, things like ancestor worship are considered evil."

Throughout Purple Hibiscus, Adichie's descriptions of Nigerian life are both vivid and brutal. And as her Igbo traditions dictate, food and communal eating are principal themes.

"My book celebrates my culture," she explains. "And food is a big thing for me and my family. Eating and sharing food is central to our Igbo way of life. Plus, I love to cook."

Although Adichie has spent a number of years in the United States, she still finds life in America very different from that in Africa.

"Here, people don't really care about issues," she says. "Americans are afforded incredible privileges, including a stable economic and political system. Perhaps that is why they don't care. In Nigeria, things are precarious and unsteady, so you have to care. I didn't question the Nigerian way of life until I came to the U.S. I guess you don't question your own reality until you have something to compare it to."

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie reads Thu., Nov. 6, 7 p.m., Robin’s Bookstore, 108 S. 13th St., 215-735-9600.