Because of writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye … 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
I live half the year in Nigeria, the other half in the U.S. But home is Nigeria - it always will be. I consider myself a Nigerian who is comfortable in the world. I look at it through Nigerian eyes.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses a deep connection to one's roots, emphasizing that home is not just a place, but an integral part of identity.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's quote highlights the significance of cultural identity and belonging. By stating that home is Nigeria despite living in the U.S., she underscores the idea that one's heritage shapes their perspective and sense of self, suggesting that comfort and identity are rooted in one's origins, even when adapting to diverse surroundings.
Themes
HomeIdentityNigeriaCultural RootsPerspective
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech at a cultural festival, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of heritage.
More from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
All quotes →The 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 sometimes think I was born to live up to my name. How could I be anything else but what I am having been named Madonna? I would either have ended up a nun or this.
Madonna CicconeRead
I must identify myself with Africa. Then I will have an identity.
Fela KutiRead
American? Indian? I don't know what these words mean. In Italy, it is all about blood, family, where you come from. I'm asked where I am from. I'm from nowhere; I always was, but now I am happy knowing it.
Jhumpa LahiriRead
The mark of a Scot of all classes [is that] he ... remembers and cherishes the memory of his forebears, good or bad; and there burns alive in him a sense of identity with the dead even to the twentieth generation.
Robert Louis StevensonRead
I don't really know what feeling Japanese or Haitian or American is supposed to feel like. I just feel like me.
Naomi OsakaRead
Being South Asian in the U.K. is like being Latino in the U.S., I would guess. It's a bit more hood. You see things; things happen. I was bouncing between worlds. You're acting from a very early age, when you have to code-switch like that. I'm a hybrid, a mongrel. I think many people live that life.
Riz AhmedRead