Nigerian
writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on Wednesday, spoke about racial issues in
America and the continual reports of black people killed by police.
In her novel
Americanah, her protagonist, Ifemelu, starts a blog about race in America from
her perspective as a Nigerian immigrant.
The blog,
called “Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those
Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black," is funny as well as
insightful.
"The blog
in Americanah—I wanted it to be funny. I wanted to poke fun, because I think
many of the ways race manifests itself in this country are actually quite funny
so I hoped that people would laugh," Adichie said at the Washington Ideas
Forum, an event produced by The Aspen Institute and The Atlantic.
Her
interviewer, Mary Louise Kelly, a contributing editor at The Atlantic, asked
what Ifemelu might say about racial issues in America today.
"I think
what’s going on now just doesn’t give me room for humor," Adichie said.
"I think that I’m so emotionally exhausted by the murders that I don’t
think I could find any space to wrap humor around what’s been happening in the
past one year, two years."
"It’s not
just that you shoot a man who’s unarmed, it’s that you handcuff him when he’s
clearly dying," she said. "There’s something about it that’s so
unforgivably inhumane and to think that his race is part of the reason ...
I
really do think that one of the terrible things about racism in this country,
is there’s a sense that blackness isn’t really seen as fully human in many
quarters. I think that’s why these things happen. I think that’s why a man who
is dying is handcuffed, that’s why a boy who is dead is left on the street for
hours. It makes me wonder: What’s happened to that part of us that is
good?"
An earlier
part of Adichie and Kelly’s conversation focused on the power of storytelling
to humanize, so Kelly asked, "Do you think you’ll be able to find a way to
write about that?
"Many
times I 've wanted to and I 've started," Adichie said. "But I almost
always feel that language has failed me. So I don't know."
Source: The
Atlantic
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