Because of writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye β¦ I realized that people like me, girls with skin the color of chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form ponytails, could also exist in literature.
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieRead
Creative writing programmes are not very necessary. They just exist so that people like us can make a living.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Creative writing programs may not be essential, but they provide an income for those involved in them.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's quote suggests that while creative writing programs might not be crucial for developing writing skills, they serve a purpose in the literary world by offering livelihood opportunities to writers and instructors. This highlights the commercial aspect of creative arts education and raises questions about the necessity and value of formal training in creativity.
Themes
Creative WritingEducationWriting ProgramsLivelihoodLiterary
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used during a panel discussion on the value of creative writing education.
More from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
All quotes βThe real tragedy of our postcolonial world is not that the majority of people had no say in whether or not they wanted this new world; rather, it is that the majority have not been given the tools to negotiate this new world.
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieRead
If I had not grown up in Nigeria- and if all I knew of Africa were of popular images- I too would think that africa was a place of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals and incomprehensible people fighting sensless wars, dying of poverty and aids- unable to speak for themselves and waiting to be saved by a kind white foreigner.
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieRead
Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieRead
You can't write a script in your mind and then force yourself to follow it. You have to let yourself be.
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieRead
Non-fiction, and in particular the literary memoir, the stylised recollection of personal experience, is often as much about character and story and emotion as fiction is.
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieRead
Similar quotes
The 'futures' and 'careers' for which American students now prepare are for the most part intellectual and moral wastelands. This chrome-plated consumers' paradise would have us grow up to be well-behaved children. But an important minority of men and women coming to the front today have shown they will die rather than be standardized, replaceable, and irrelevant.
Mario SavioRead
We want a book to be a book. We'll have all the interactive bells and whistles but our intent is to engage young people in reading, not to show them a movie.
Levar BurtonRead
Kids have little computer bodies with disks that store information. They remember who had to do the dishes the last time you had spaghetti, who lost the knob off the TV set six years ago, who got punished for teasing the dog when he wasn't teasing the dog and who had to wear girls boots the last time it snowed.
Erma BombeckRead
Youth is a time when we find the books we give up but do not get over.
Lionel TrillingRead
My writing is often a way of 'bearing witness' for others who lack the education and the opportunity to tell their own stories, so I hope that my writing won't be affected too much by my personal life.
Joyce Carol OatesRead
What I've found about it is that there are some folks you can talk to until you're blue in the face--they're never going to get it and they're never going to change. But every once in a while, you'll run into someone who is eager to listen, eager to learn, and willing to try new things. Those are the people we need to reach. We have a responsibility as parents, older people, teachers, people in the neighborhood to recognize that.
Tyler PerryRead