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
Taking trains and trams in Berlin, I noticed people reading. Books, I mean - not pocket-size devices that bleep as if censorious, on which even Shakespeare scans like a spreadsheet.
Joshua CohenRead
We've forgotten how to remember, and just as importantly, we've forgotten how to pay attention. So, instead of using your smartphone to jot down crucial notes, or Googling an elusive fact, use every opportunity to practice your memory skills. Memory is a muscle, to be exercised and improved.
Joshua FoerRead
As I teach, I project the condition of my soul onto my students, my subject, and our way of being together.
Parker J. PalmerRead
You perceive now, my friends, what your general or abstract duty is as teachers. Although you have to generate in your pupils a large stock of ideas, any one of which may be inhibitory, yet you must also see to it that no habitual hesitancy or paralysis of the will ensues, and that the pupil still retains his power of vigorous action.
William JamesRead
Across much of the developing world, by the time she is 12, a girl is tending house, cooking, cleaning. She eats what's left after the men and boys have eaten; she is less likely to be vaccinated, to see a doctor, to attend school.
Nancy GibbsRead
You don't teach morals and ethics and empathy and kindness in the schools. You teach that at home, and children learn by example.
Judy SheindlinRead