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
I always read. You know how sharks have to keep swimming or they die? Iβm like that. If I stop reading, I die.
Patrick RothfussRead
There is nothing of any consequence in education, in the economy, in city planning, in social policy that does not concern black people.
Toni MorrisonRead
It's important to make a distinction between the news and journalism. The news is about recent, incidental and sensational events. It's mostly about exceptions.
Rutger BregmanRead
In the 2013 Economists Program, we hired 51 percent women, 49 percent men. And the reason for that is that we have a draft from all over the world, and we've hired, for instance, in that group, a good number of Chinese economists - highly qualified, all Ph.D.s from the best universities of the world. And guess what? They're all women.
Christine LagardeRead
Enter to learn; depart to serve.
Mary Mcleod BethuneRead
A man's college and university degrees mean nothing to me until I see what he is able to do with them.
Henry FordRead