Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on Discovering America

Summary

Podcast Summary: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on Discovering America

Podcast: The New Yorker Radio Hour
Host: David Remnick (with interviewer likely John Seabrook for main conversation)
Guest: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Date: January 30, 2018

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Overview: Main Theme & Purpose

This episode centers on acclaimed Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s journey from Lagos to America, her process of self-discovery, and her candid reflections on identity, race, feminism, and writing. Adichie discusses her personal experiences as an immigrant, a writer, and a vocal feminist, especially her bold approach to taboo subjects. The conversation, held at the New Yorker Festival, provides sharp insights into American and Nigerian cultures, identity politics, and the expectations and pitfalls of literary and political communities.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Leaving Nigeria and Arriving in America

• Fleeing Medicine for Creative Freedom

  • Adichie shares her motivation for coming to the U.S.—escaping preordained expectations in Nigeria to become a doctor, instead seeking freedom to explore art and humanities.
  • "I came to the US because I was fleeing the study of medicine." (01:26)

• American Reality vs. Expectation

  • Adichie’s first impressions of Philadelphia were dissonant—she found the reality of housing disappointing compared to her polished visions of America.
  • "I imagined that everything in America was clean and shiny and bright, you know, and it wasn't. And that disappointed me profoundly." (03:06)

2. The Purpose of Writing and Publishing

• Desire for Connection, Delight, and Humanity

  • She distinguishes between writing and publishing: the former for herself, the latter for connection.
  • "We publish because we seek a certain connection. We want to be read. I write the kind of fiction I like to read... that delights me, that instructs me, that feels rooted in sort of some kind of humanity." (05:29)

• On Writing 'Americanah' as a 'F--- You Book'

  • Adichie describes writing from a place of freedom, rebelling against the literary expectation to discuss race only subtly:
  • "Much of the writing about race I just found to be dishonest... And it seemed to me also quite ideological... I just felt that, yeah..." (06:34)

3. Critique of the Political Left & Liberal Orthodoxy

• On Ideological Frustration and Purity Tests

  • Adichie finds the American left cannibalistic and self-righteous, highlighting how quick the community can be to ostracize its own over perceived ideological impureness.
    • "The left is cannibalistic. It eats its own... It's so easy to fall afoul of the ridiculously high standards set there." (08:07)
  • She discusses the orthodoxy, rigidity, and need for performative purity within progressive circles.
    • "There's an orthodoxy. There's a kind of... you follow the rules and if you don't, you're cut down very quickly." (09:19)

• Personal Experience with the Transgender Debate Blowback

  • Adichie recounts criticism for stating, "I think trans women are trans women, and that I think there is a difference between trans women and women who are born female." (09:58)
  • She describes the outsized reaction, including being lectured at public events and feeling misunderstood:
    • "It was as though somebody had died. Seriously... it was simply that I didn’t use the language I was supposed to use." (10:56)

4. Freedom of Speech in America

• On Debating Offensive Ideas
  • Adichie advocates for more speech—not censorship—when responding to controversial public figures and ideas.
    • "I guess I'm just a person who thinks that the answer to bad speech is more speech in general." (12:15)
  • She challenges the notion that protecting students from offensive ideas in college shields them from real-world racism.
    • "America is a country that is steeped in racism. So how are you protecting this young woman in a college? By not having a speaker come? When she steps out into the world... she's stepping out into racism." (13:09)

5. Discovering 'Blackness' in America

• Encountering U.S. Racial Categorization
  • In Nigeria, Adichie never thought of herself as Black—America imposed the identity on her.
    • "In Nigeria, there was no reason for me to think of myself as Black. In Nigeria." (13:31)
  • She shares her first taste of American racial bias—a professor surprised at her essay quality:
    • "That's when I knew what being black meant. It meant that you're not supposed to write the best essay in class if you're black." (13:50)
  • She reflects on her own internalized discomfort at being racially grouped:
    • "It was me backing away from blackness because I knew that in America, blackness is a bad thing... Now I want to find him and hug him and say, I am so your sister." (14:57)

6. On Immigration, Opportunity, and Identity

• Immigration as Agency
  • Adichie sees coming to America as an act of assertion, not simply desperation.
    • "The act of immigration, when it's not an act of desperation... is an assertive action." (15:44)
  • She admires America's culture of possibility, real or imagined.
    • "Only here do I feel... Doesn't matter if it's true. I feel it." (16:14)

7. Feminism: In Nigeria and the U.S.

• Why Call Herself a Feminist?

  • Despite the word’s reputational baggage, Adichie insists on labeling herself a feminist to start necessary conversations, albeit at personal cost.
    • "Feminist is a bad word in Nigeria. A feminist is a person who is unhappy, as some people have told me. It's a person who hates men... But feminist is a bad word all over the world, actually." (16:47)

• Nigerian vs. Western Feminism

  • She notes Nigeria’s overlooked tradition of feminist autonomy—counter to the notion that Western feminism is singular.
    • "Western feminism, having been the most documented feminism, can often seem like the only feminism. Right. As though there haven't been movements of sort of insubordinate women in Asia and Latin America and Africa." (17:45)
  • She observes a shift: her mother’s generation, despite cultural limitations, pursued autonomy more freely than Adichie's, which is more preoccupied with marriage.
    • "I sometimes think that my generation, there's a kind of conservative strain that didn't exist 50 years ago, where marriage is what everybody aspires to." (18:19)

• Family Expectations

  • Adichie’s parents were relatively progressive, but marriage was still an expectation after academic achievements.
    • "You get your degree, you get your master's, you get your PhD, you get the husband after the PhD..." (18:48)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much... Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage." — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie [00:31]
• "I wanted to write about my take on America, and much of it was about race... Writing about race I just found to be dishonest. I would read some fiction and be like, no, right." — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie [06:34]
• "The left is cannibalistic. It eats its own." — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie [08:07]
• "It was as though somebody had died. Seriously... it was simply that I didn't use the language I was supposed to use." — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on backlash to her comments about trans women [10:56]
• "In Nigeria, there was no reason for me to think of myself as Black... That's when I knew what being black meant. It meant that you're not supposed to write the best essay in class if you're black." — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie [13:31, 13:50]
• "Feminist is a bad word in Nigeria. A feminist is a person who is unhappy, as some people have told me. It's a person who hates men." — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie [16:47]
• "Western feminism, having been the most documented feminism, can often seem like the only feminism." — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie [17:45]

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Timestamps of Major Segments

• 00:06 – Introduction by David Remnick
• 01:26 – Adichie’s decision to come to America
• 03:06 – First impressions of Philadelphia and American reality
• 05:07 – Discussion of the purpose of Adichie’s novels and writing vs. publishing
• 06:26 – Meaning of 'fuck you book' and writing about race honestly
• 08:06 – Critique of ideological purity on the left
• 09:49 – Public blowback over transgender women comments
• 12:15 – Speech, censorship, and campus controversies
• 13:29 – Discovery of blackness in America
• 16:47 – Feminism and its perception in Nigeria and the world
• 17:45 – Nigerian feminism vs. Western feminism
• 18:48 – Expectations for women and autonomy in Adichie’s family

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Tone and Language

The exchange is candid, insightful, sometimes humorous, and unflinchingly honest. Adichie’s responses are nuanced, often using humor to disarm, but never shying away from serious or controversial topics.

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Conclusion

This episode offers a vivid, personal perspective on the immigrant experience, challenges of identity, honesty in art, and the perils and promise of advocacy. Adichie provides invaluable commentary on how cultures and ideologies shape—and sometimes constrain—individuals, especially women and writers.

For more Adichie: Visit newyorker.com and search her renowned TED talk “We Should All Be Feminists.”

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Note:
This summary only covers the featured interview with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The latter half of the episode shifts to a music segment with Laura Marling, which is not included in this summary, as per instructions.

Transcript

[David Remnick]

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. The novelist Chimamamonda Ngoze Adichie, who was born in Nigeria, has won a raft of awards, including the genius grant, as it's known, the MacArthur Fellowship, and a National Book Critics Circle award for her best selling novel, Americanah. But who cares about that? Because how many fiction writers have been sampled by Beyonce?

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man. Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage.

[David Remnick]

But Aditya is not a woman easily cowed by fame. She later questioned the attention that came her way, the assumption that she should somehow be grateful. And she criticized Beyonce, saying in so many words that the singer spent maybe a little bit too much time talking about men. In her novels, Aditya has written about life in Nigeria and that country's long civil war, and about a Nigerian immigrant in the United States who became a popular blogger. I sat down with Adichie at the New Yorker Festival in October, and she told me about her experience of coming to live in America as a young woman.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

I came to the US because I was fleeing the study of medicine.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

You were running away?

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

Yes. I had started in Nigeria in medical school because, you know, you do well in school, they tell you you have to be a doctor. And I kind of went along with that. And I had it all nicely planned out. I was going to become a psychiatrist, and then I was going to use my patient stories for my fiction. That was kind of the plan, right? And then a year into my studying medicine, I just thought, I'm so unhappy I couldn't do it. And so I decided to try and go to America. I got a scholarship. So it wasn't actually that my sort of parents sent me off. And part of the reason that America became the dream place to go to was because England felt too familiar. And the system is too much like the Nigerian system, which is the start very early on, to put you in a track. So I was in the science track. You know, the bright kids were in the science track. And if you were considered to be intelligent, you were not supposed to be interested in art and history. You were supposed to like chemistry and physics. And so for me, America became this place where a friend of mine who had come here said to me that she took classes in music and biology. And I thought this was the most exciting thing.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

And what was you when you Landed in Philadelphia. I know you had been in as a kid. You were in California because your father taught there. So America wasn't a complete shock to the system. But here you are now, a young woman. You're 18.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

Yep.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

What are your first impressions of suddenly being in Philadelphia?

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

Do you know? It's difficult to see. I guess I was very excited, obviously. I was also kind of disappointed because there's a sense in which you. There's a sense in which obviously reality never quite fits with one's imagination. So I imagined that everything in America was clean and shiny and bright, you know, and it wasn't. And that disappointed me profoundly. So I lived in West Philly, which, you know, I lived with three American young women in an apartment. And the first time I went to see the apartment, I was just shocked.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

How so?

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

Because, you know, again, in my head, I thought, you know, I'm going to share an apartment with Americans, and it's Philadelphia. So they open the door, the stairs are creaky, the carpeting is old. There are bits at the corners where it looks like rats have gnawed at it. And I just thought, really. And so it was just really. I remember the stove looking so old. And I remember thinking, you know, our stove in Osuka is very shiny compared to this. So there was a kind of. Yeah, there was a kind of disappointment. But I do have to say that when I started classes, it was just this incredible exhilaration.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

You say that there are some writers that write as the result of other writers or responding to literature, and some writers that write out of life. As a writer, what do you want your stories to do? What do you want your stories to do to these people in this room and who are clicking on you and Amazon and picking up that book? Where do you not think about that that much? Is it an activity that's basically for you, and then it goes out into the world and does something magical, mysterious, commercial, whatever might be all of those.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

What do I want it to do for these people? I wanted to give them much happiness and fantastic, perfect skin and hair. Yeah, that's. So this is. Please buy my book. That's what will happen.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

So it's like Oil of Olay.

[John Seabrook]

Yes.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

The dream life awaits you. Do you know, I think that's a good question, because I don't think about it. I mean. But on the other hand, it's kind of. It is complex because I think to claim that you don't think about it, then why write? We write. Or rather we publish. Because I do think Writing and publishing are two very separate things. And, you know, we publish because we seek a certain connection. We want to be read. I think I. I write the kind of fiction I like to read. And I know that I look for fiction that delights me, that instructs me, that feels rooted in sort of some kind of humanity.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

You have a phrase that I don't know necessarily is for polite company about your definition of a fuck you book. You describe Americana as your. I'll say it again, because why not fuck you book? What do you mean by that?

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

I said that?

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

Yeah, you did. See, it's right here.

[John Seabrook]

Oh, goodness.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

I don't know. I can't hold my alcohol. I think what I was trying to say, and I do stand by that, it's that sense of writing from a place of freedom. And I wanted to write about. Obviously, Americana in many ways, is about leaving home, about immigration, but it's also much of it that's set in Nigeria and England, but it's quite American. So I wanted to write about my take on America, and much of it was about race. And I had realized, having lived here long enough, that when it comes to literary fiction, you're not supposed to write directly about race. I mean, if you do write about race, it's supposed to be subtle. And there's a lot that's supposed to go under that word nuance. And much of the writing about race I just found to be dishonest. I would read some fiction and be like, no, right. And it seemed to me also quite ideological, you know, that idea, you know, the sort of thing that race is just a social construction, but all of that. And I just felt that, yeah, you.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

Don'T put up with liberal cant and jargon, whether it's on subjects of feminism or race at all, despite politics.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

I don't. I don't. I mean, obviously that's my sort of tribe in many ways, because America doesn't give you many choices.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

They're too stuck ideologically.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

Yes, it's my ideological tribe, so.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

So you're saying that your ideological tribe kind of pisses you off a little bit.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

Yeah.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

How so?

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

I think the left in this country is creating its own decline. I think the left doesn't know how to be a tribe in the way the right does. The left is cannibalistic. It eats its own. This isn't going to sound very kind, and I.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

But we're not here for kindness, people.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

People on the left, you know, so there's something to be said, of course, for ideals and I believe very much in that. But I think when one speaks about politics, sometimes there can be a kind of, you know, sort of an extremist idea of purity. And it's so easy to fall afoul of the ridiculously high standards set there. And there's often also a kind of self righteousness. I mean, sometimes I remember when I was at Yale in graduate school, and I would sometimes be in gatherings of, you know, this fiercely leftist, crusading, well meaning people, you know, all of whom recycled. I. I used to feel, Honestly, I used to feel. I used to feel very tainted because.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

I thought, my God, they're all recycling.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

Yeah, I mean, I just, I thought they're all so good. I mean, they have no flaws. And I used to sit there thinking, really? I mean, you know, they would never buy any clothes that were made in sweatshops. They just seem to. And I used to think, sometimes I don't know where my clothes are made, but if it's cheap, I'll buy it, you know? You know, and there's an orthodoxy. There's a kind of you follow the rules and if you don't, you're cut down very quickly.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

And you've had this happen to you.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

I have.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

What's the most painful one?

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

I think it was my comments about transgender women. It wasn't even. I mean, in some ways, I think.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

You should maybe explain what.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

So I had done an interview in London and this woman had said to me, and I don't remember the question, but what I did say was that I think trans women are trans women, and that I think there is a difference between trans women and women who are born female. And apparently in liberal orthodoxy, you're not supposed to say that, because in the quest for inclusiveness, the left is willing to discard a certain kind of complex truth. And I think there's a quickness to assign ill intent.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

So I remember thinking, how did you feel it coming? How did the, how did the blowback come out here?

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

Tons of emails from friends saying, hope you're doing well, and, and, you know, and don't worry, we have your back, and, you know, just take this time off and get a massage. And I, you know, and.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

Because in other words, they were on Twitter and you weren't.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

Yes.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

Yeah.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

So I knew it was bad because I was getting all these messages. It was as though somebody had died. Seriously. And, you know, initially I didn't take it seriously because I thought, surely nobody thinks that. I mean, I sort of feel that I. That the space I occupy in the world is one that is, of course, for inclusiveness. Right. That, of course, I couldn't possibly be suggesting that trans women are not part of feminism, which apparently had been how it had been seen. But I think it was simply that I didn't use the language I was supposed to use. Seriously. Friends sent me flowers, and it's nice.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

To know they care.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

Well, they did. But then I thought, my God, what is going on? And then, you know, my publishers were inundated with, you know, interview requests. There were people who were like, does she want to take her words back now? And I just thought, what? Oh. And then I did public events where there's a woman who stood up and lectured me for 30 minutes about how I was killing trans women and how I had no compassion and how I needed to shut up. And it's interesting because a lot of sort of liberal. The response is not to debate. The response is to silence. And I find that very troubling.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

When you look at the speech issue here.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

Yes.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

Which has gotten complicated from Yale to Berkeley, and not just on college campuses, but centered on college campuses, how do you react to that?

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

I guess I'm just a person who thinks that the answer to bad speech is more specific in general.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

So the classic liberal view of speech.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

I do. I feel that way because I think that, you know, and also, I suppose, maybe not be in American hells, because I sort of look at the people. I mean, there's the man with the unpronounceable name. Who? Milo something.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

Oh, Milo Yiannopoulos.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

Yeah. Cause he. There was all the noise at Berkeley was Because of him. Right. And then there was the noise at Middlebury because of the guy who read the Bell Curve. I then went and read the Bell Curve, and, you know, I just thought, it's actually not even very interesting. It's not very good. And I think it's very easy to discount. And, you know, I spoke to a young woman who. She said to me she was white, but she said, you know, I have black friends in my college, and we want to protect them. And I said, it's very strange because America is a country that is steeped in racism. So how are you protecting this young woman in a college? By not having a speaker come. When she steps out into the world, into the American world, she's stepping out into racism.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

Now, one of your biggest discoveries is when you came here was that there was a thing. There was blackness.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

Yes.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

Which you did not experience.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

No. In Nigeria, there was no reason for me to think of myself as Black in Nigeria.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

So this came to you as a shock or comedy or as both?

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

Yeah, all of those things. I mean, racism I found funny, absurd, infuriating.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

How did you experience it?

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

The first time I wrote an essay in a class, my very first essay. And we. And at the time, I used my initial and my last name and my last name, I think, could be anything. Some people sometimes tell me it could be Italian. So the professor came into the class and said, who wrote this essay? And he called my name, and I raised my hand and he looked surprised. And even though it was a very small moment, that's when I knew what being black meant. It meant that you're not supposed to write the best essay in class if you're black. It meant that black achievement is considered so. So rare.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

So, you know, the violence of low expectations.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

And I was irritated by that because. Because for me, growing up in Nigeria, you know, black achievement is ordinary. But then it became other things. It became. I remember once a black guy referred to me as sister, and my first reaction was, no, no, no, I'm not your sister. And, you know, I talk about that now because I.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

You thought it was rude.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

No, no. It was me backing away from blackness because I knew that in America, blackness is a bad thing. So in some ways, my denying my sisterhood with him was. It's an indictment of American racism, you know, so if being black in America didn't come with a lot of crap, I wouldn't have said, no, no, I'm not your sister. And now I want to find him and hug him and say, I am so your sister. Right. But it took. So in some ways, blackness is. So America thrusts it on you in the way that, why be here?

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

In other words, I'm here. I was born here. I don't know where else to go.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

Oh, I have suggestions for you.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

Please. I could use an invitation. The act of immigration, when it's not an act of desperation, and I don't think that was an act of desperation in your biography. Is an assertive action. Yeah, It's a leaving home, and it's a choosing limited range of choices, maybe, but it is an act of choosing. What does being in America do for you as a human being and your daughter's future?

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

I have always admired the sense in this country of possibility. And only here do I feel. Doesn't matter if it's true. I feel it. And that's.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

It's a story.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

Yes.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

You've said that you would sell more books in Nigeria if you didn't call Yourself a feminist. Nevertheless, you very much do call yourself a feminist. Why would that be? Tell us about the situation there where this is concerned.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

Feminist is a bad word in Nigeria. A feminist is a person who is unhappy, as some people have told me. It's a person who hates men. But feminist is a bad word all over the world. Actually, feminist is a bad word in this country. I mean, look at how Hillary Clinton was treated when she was running for president. But in Nigeria, there's a kind of directness. So people will say, oh, you know, we cannot have a woman be governor of so and so state, or a woman can't run because people will not vote for a woman. And because it's so direct, there's a sense in which it's almost refreshing, you know, what you're dealing with. And so to choose to identify myself as feminist publicly, I think, was to almost like sort of putting a target on my. Because, you know, obviously I knew it was a bad word. But I did hope to start a conversation. I hope to inspire both women and men.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

What is the shape of Nigerian feminism? I mean, what does it look like? How limited or not is it?

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

Nigeria actually has a tradition, a feminist tradition. And increasingly, I find that I want to think and talk about that more and more because I think Western feminism, having been the most documented feminism, can often seem like the only feminism. Right. As though there haven't been movements of sort of insubordinate women in Asia and Latin America and Africa. Right. I think today my mother's generation. My mother was born in 1942, I think, held more closely to sense of autonomy for the. At least for sort of.

[Laura Marling]

Yeah.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

A sense of autonomy. Not to say that they were equal in the eyes of the law or because they were not in sort of cultural norms. They were not. I sometimes think that my generation, there's a kind of conservative strain that didn't exist 50 years ago, where marriage is what everybody aspires to. And I talk to young women in Lagos, and they're all talking about, I'm 24 before, I haven't met the one.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

I'll be an old maid.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

Yeah. And I just feel like, no, you need to go do something with your.

[Interviewer (possibly John Seabrook or another New Yorker Festival interviewer)]

Was your household different?

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

Yes, sort of. I mean, as things go, my parents were progressive for the time and place. I was never sort of told that I had to get married, but the expectation was there, right, that that's what, you know, you get your degree, you get your master's, you get your PhD, you get the husband after the PhD for my family, yes. For other families, I think no.

[David Remnick]

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. You can read some of her [e-mail] and you can find her now famous talk. We should all be feminists on YouTube or wherever. Still ahead, a performance from singer songwriter Laura Marling. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

[Laura Marling (singing)]

Perhaps she's had too much of Love can be a sickly thing.

[David Remnick]

Welcome back to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Today we're bringing you interviews from the New Yorker Festival that took place a couple of months ago. Now, often at the festival, my colleague John Seabrook will interview one of the more interesting songwriters or pop musicians of the day. And we get to hear a little music. Laura Marling released her first album when she was 18 years old, but it didn't feel like the work of someone who'd just earned the right to vote. Marling is 27 now, with six albums already behind her. And her particular brand of dense but delicate folk music has earned her all kinds of awards, the acclaim of critics, and a lot of passionate fans like John Seabrook.

[John Seabrook]

In my work, I meet quite a few artists that are very good singers. Some of those artists are also good players, and a few of those artists are also good songwriters. But I never meet someone who is as good as you are at each of those categories, any one of which would probably make you a very successful artist. So you're a real artist. Welcome. You're fantastic.

[Laura Marling]

Thank you. Thanks.

[John Seabrook]

And Laura and I actually know each other. We met a couple years ago. We played Boggle together. But anyway, so Laura, that was in April of 2015, when you were coming off of your last album, Short Movie. Talk about what you were doing in California those years. You had three, four great albums and then you left Britain and went to California. Let's why I was.

[Laura Marling]

I was touring by myself. So after my fourth record, which was once, I was an eagle, right, I had been touring with a band for eight years, I guess, or seven years, and I was tired of that, so I decided to go and tour the States just on my own.

[John Seabrook]

I read something you said, interesting. You said that because you started so young and when you start touring and when you go out, your sort of emotional development is sort of arrested by the nature of touring. Yeah, it's hard to develop as a person. Can you talk a little bit? What is it about touring that kind of arrests you in terms of development?

[Laura Marling]

Well, you basically employ someone to be your parent, you know, full time carer.

[John Seabrook]

That's your tour manager?

[Laura Marling]

Yeah, it's a really thankless job. But, yeah, you know, you are given a schedule every day. You're told where to shower and at what time.

[John Seabrook]

Right.

[Laura Marling]

And it's very limiting and it's.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

You.

[Laura Marling]

Know, it's very claustrophobic. It can be. If your mindset begins to make it that way, it becomes sort of terrifyingly claustrophobic.

[John Seabrook]

And that was part of what drove you to California, that wanting to get out of that cycle.

[Laura Marling]

Well, I did the tour of the States and it was, you know, magical, and I had a lot of adventures. And then I just landed in la. Not somewhere I had ever even sort of romanticized in my head. Yeah. And I just. I landed there and I stayed there and I found that really, from the claustrophobic mindset that I was in LA was kind of perfect.

[John Seabrook]

I mean, the other thing about California with you, and we were talking a little about this earlier, Laura had a father who loved 60s singer songwriters, in particular Neil Young. And one of your very first songs that he taught you was the Needle and the Damage Done, which I think you later recorded with Jack White.

[Laura Marling]

Yeah.

[John Seabrook]

It's a really great version, by the way. But I think on the Joni Mitchell. I mean, he actually had you sit and listen as a very young person to Joni Mitchell, right?

[Laura Marling]

Yeah, yeah.

[John Seabrook]

And I was saying, I was asking you earlier, do you think he kind of wanted to make you into Joni Mitchell?

[Laura Marling]

Yes. It's creepy to think that maybe he.

[John Seabrook]

Did, because maybe it worked.

[Laura Marling]

Yeah.

[John Seabrook]

No, I mean. But anyway, can you talk a little bit about having a father who was a record producer who influenced you musically?

[Laura Marling]

Yeah, well, I mean, he. I was saying earlier, I think Joni Mitchell was the only female songwriter he could think to put in front of me.

[John Seabrook]

Have you felt like Joni Mitchell has become a musical touchstone for you? I mean, your voice in that middle range, up and down, sounds somewhat like Joni Mitchell.

[Laura Marling]

Wow, that's very kind.

[John Seabrook]

I mean. And you're a brilliant songwriter like Joni Mitchell, and you're blonde.

[Laura Marling]

And I'm a lady.

[John Seabrook]

You're a lady?

[Laura Marling]

Yeah. Well, I think.

[John Seabrook]

And then you went to California. I guess that's what I was thinking of. Like, wasn't that part of your California trip to maybe reckon with some of these archetypes that you kind of grew up with or.

[Laura Marling]

Yeah. Someone was asking me the other day whether I lived in Laurel Canyon when I was there, and I was like, no, you can't afford to live in Laurel Canyon. Are you kidding me? Right so as soon as I got there, all of that mysticism was gone. Do you know what I mean? But there are still the. But there is this mystical thing in LA that the old school guys and girls are there. You feel that they're there in the hills looking down on the city. And you hear about, you know, because most of my friends are musicians and they, you know, talk about playing with Jackson Brown at the weekend or, you.

[John Seabrook]

Know, they're like the old fathers up there.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

Yeah.

[John Seabrook]

David Crosby.

[Laura Marling]

David Crosby, of course.

[John Seabrook]

Like a Buddha.

[Laura Marling]

Yeah. If you grow up listening to a lot of Joni Mitchell, then you end up having a lot of guitar tunings. So what's happening there?

[David Remnick]

That's John Seabrook talking with Laura Marling at the New Yorker Festival in 2017. And here's Laura Marling playing the Valley. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Thanks for listening.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

Now.

[Laura Marling (singing)]

She stayed in town last night didn't get in touch I know she has my number right. She can't face seeing us she sings in the valley in the morning Many a morning I have woke Longing to ask her what she's moaning Because I know it can't be spoken Perhaps she's had too much of Love can be a sickly thing that's why she mourns the morning dew and the newness that it bring she sings in the valley in the morning Many a morning I have worn Longing to ask her what she's mourning of course I know it can't be spun I love her in the morning I love her in the.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

Day.

[Laura Marling (singing)]

I'd love high in the evening if only she would stay.

[Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

We love.

[Laura Marling (singing)]

Beauty cause it needs us too it needs our drooling gaze.

[Narrator/Producer]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards with with additional music by Alexis Cuadrado. This episode was produced with special help from Rhonda Sherman, Eric Malinsky, Alexis Goldberg, David Ohana, Hilary Leichter Griffin, Emily Mann and Jessica Henderson. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Turina Endowment Fund.