Now on booktv, nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi adichie delivers the 2015 pen world voices freedom to write lecture. [inaudible conversations] good afternoon. Im suzanne the executive director of Pen American Center and on behalf of our 4,000 members, its a great honor to welcome you to the tenth annual Arthur Miller freedom to write lecture by Chimamanda Ngozi adichie. [applause] just a word on the first Arthur Miller lecture delivered here in this room in 2006 by his knew appearances observations read as if they could have been written this week. He said respect for the rights of religious and ethnic minorities should never be an excuse to violate freedom of speech. We writers should never hesitate on this matter no matter how provocative the pretext. Our natural deattachments and desire to understand those unlike us should never stand in the way of our respect for human rights but thomas doesnt leave it at that. He goes right on to say he is always had difficulty expressing my political judgments in a clear and emphatic and strong way. He described the world where the osed can quickly become the oppressor and the oppressor the oppressed. Where holding firm views about people and things is a difficult enterprise. Indeed e. To me thats a succinct reflection on this difficult week at pen. One goal is to provide context. In person, sustained conversation, about important books and ideas to undergird where articles, reviews and images, whiz around contextfree informing abusing, and sometimes offending and enraging. To paraphrase what may have been mark twain on observation or cartoon can travel halfway around the world before the context gets its boots on. During the world voices festival we book a hotel room for that missing context. We bring writers and thinkers here to probe answer questions and unlock meaning. As important as it is, context is not always the final word. Strong reactions to expression taken out of context are borne of their own context. Knowing the context can raise as many questions as it answers. All the more reason to set aside time to sit and reason together across international boundaries. Especially a gulf as wide as divide this United States and africa a vast ocean of politics literature, and culture, you dare traverse this week. If the context shared here at world voices sparks greater understanding, appreciation, or empathy contracts that s cross that expanse the festival will have done its job. If you have been energized perplexed or inspired by what you have heard this week or what youre about to hear, i urge you to join pen support pen, be part of our community add your voice, we need it. In closing i wanted to offer just a quick word of congratulations and profound thanks to tim chan, the entire pen world voices team. Were so proud of them for allowing us all to travel the distance we have gone this week, and to arrive in the places where they have led us. Thank you. [applause] hi, im the chair of pen world voices. On last wednesday evening at the bronx museum of the arts there was an event whose texture managed to typify in an exemplary way the aims of the festival. The event was called the witnesses. And its sought to interrogate and celebrate the value of age and wisdom in the creation of literature and the enrichment of life in africa and elsewhere. Among the speakers were the west african poet the great kenyan writer and the american poet, but distinguished the discussion in that large crowded venue was the tone the writers took. The complete absence of cliche or lazy source. They watched their words they could carry into their language, their insights. What they said about africa, about rising, about history and our faith in the world enrichmond our lives as readersers and citizens. The mission of this festival is to invite much presences to come into the light so we can share their vision and come to see more clearly. That is merely one event, and these events will all be online and some of ohm are online already so everybody can see them. And this is merely one event in many which set out to honor the vision of sal man rush which i. And i hand you over to jacob now. Thank you. The event started 3465 days ago. I was at a party talking to an editor and i mentioned that i was coming i would love to talk to chimamanda. 344 days ago i was talking which Chimamanda Ngozi adichie and i asked her to actually be my cocurator and help guiding me through this really ambitious project, to frame africa. She said yes. So we started to work and we, at the end of the road, presented something which speaks the not about the dark and not about the troubled africa but the real africa. Being insatiable festival director a couple of days after, i again called chimamanda and asked her to consider to deliver the Arthur Miller freedom do write lecture, 330 days after she said yes and here we are 2015, and the Chimamanda Ngozi adichie delivering the Arthur Miller lecture. [cheers and applause] sal [cheers and applause] [cheers and applause] thank you. Im even more nervous than i was. Thank you. Thank you for that warm welcome and thank you for that introduction. Its always a bit worrying, walking across the Long Distance in shoes like this because er worried youll fall down. Im happy i didnt. Thank you all so much for being here. Its an honor for me to be here. When i was first asked to give this lecture i felt very honored at the thought of standing in this wonderful space steeped in history. So i happily said yes. And as happens everytime that my ego causes me to accept an invitation i then immediately sink into panic. I ask myself two questions why in the world did i say yes and what in the world am i going to talk about . And in this particular case it was a panic. Because of all the talented writers here, fellow practitioners in the craft of fellow travelers in the strange journey thats storytelling. Pen does much important work and what could i possibly say about the freedom to write that had not already been said . I asked. And jacob who was very kind, asked me to be a as personal as possible which made me wish that i had a dramatic story of being hauled off to prison by nigerian soldier us because of something i had written. But since i do not have such a story, sadly i would like to talk instead about censorship about the shades, the smaller quieter meanings of censorship, beyond the cacophony of coward yes and courage. An american journalisted and me what it was like to be an compile. I kept telling her i was not an exile. And she just kept asking about exile. And then what i managed finally to convince her that i was not an exile shed and if i would talk about other African Writers who were in exile. There was for me something retroabout exile. Something serious but also deeply unfamiliar. It made me think of south African Writer in the apartheid. I got the disturbing sense that the journalist wanted me to be an exile. Theres something almost about the writer from a foreign and preferably developing country who is in exile. Exile being a condition that comes of course will stories of personal and creativity, stories of censorship and other stories accompanied by much handwringing. Theres a general tendency in the United States to define problems of censorship as essentially foreign problems. On the surface this is not unreasonable especially if our definition of censorship is narrowly about government action. After all nobody is being murdered or hauled off to prison by the American Government for writing a novel. The prospect that is arguably, was, somebody spying on your emails, or on your google searches, but what if we look beyond the surface. I live in both nigeria and the United States, and i consider both of them home. Rather nigeria is home and the u. S. Is home of fault. I love both places for different reasons. But i always hope that if i were ever to get sick, it would be in the u. S. , because American Hospitals, at least for people like me who are fortunate enough to have Health Insurance are devoted to keeping you comfortable. They give you a glorious amount of pain medicine. The idea of pain being anathema, and they you many halverelated questions that are centered on being comfortable. Now, this does not happen in nigerian hospitals. It is not so much that nigerians like discomfort. Its rather, that nigerian hospital are not as interested in keeping you comfortable while treating you as they are in simply treating you. And nigerians spend pain and discomfort. Theyre part of the process of health care, and i suppose of life in general. Needless to say if i were to undergo surgery i would much rather be obliviously high and happy. [laughter] than too much pain medication. Life is complicated enough, and there are many other possible sources of pain. But this American Hospital culture is an example of a larger american ideal the addiction to comfort. And this addiction to comfort this prime si of comfort as an idea which might be harmlessly convenient in hospital and drivethrough banks often leads to a kind of silencing in Public Discourse. A dangerous silencing. The fear of causing offense the fear of ruffling the careful layers of comfort becomes a fettish. Thinks are left unsaid. Questions unasked. We human beings generally sense censor ourselves all the time. We hold back because there are preset narratives to which we are loyal. But until i came to america did i become so finely attuned to how you should say things and how not to say things in Public Discourse. I learn that in public conversations about americas problems especially problems to do with race, poverty income inequality the goal is not truth. The goal is comfort. Comfort for all ostensibly, but in reality comfort for the more powerful. And the burden to be comfort sensitive in Public Discourse to be digestible and ininclusive is most often placed on those who have been least included. Mainstream public conversations are usually flattened and multiple options do not exist. It has always trouble met how quickly people in media are fired for something they have said. Not because i like or support what they say. I offer dont. I often fine most things said quite stupid. But because it is a silencing that leads to a larger kind of silencing, the act or firing a person for what she has said without engaging what was said, almost suggests that what was said had a certain power if not truth. Even the literary world is addicted to comfort. Why, for example is it valid criticism in america to discredit a piece of literature for not having something called redemption. It was wonderfully called the cult of hope. We speak of the ugly sides of human nature as though we ourselves inherently are incapable of such ugly acts, and because we are unwilling to recognize within ourselves the possibility of what horrifies us it leads to a kind of silencing. Many universities in the United States whose wellmeaning interest in the protection of students can often degenerate into an insular closed space where certain questions are not asked, where codes of silence remain unchallenged, and where ignorance is never admitted to, and in my opinion the ability to admit to ignorance is a wonderful thing. The Mass Movement on social media, transitory and often steeped in shallow outreach as they are are also often tools of silencing. A recent example close to home for me was the bring back our bill campaign. There was something facile about it. The words a prop for celebrity photograph with no credit, then the same can be said of many things in the world. What was troubling to me was how the idea of bring back our girls closed conversations about boko haram. It simplified boko harams principles if one can use that word. The truth is that boko haram is not anymore than the Mainstream Society and which it exists. And boko haram has attacked boys kidnapped boyed, murdered boys, targeted boys, as they have done girls. But the narrative had been forced to fit an easily easily and internationally digestible model in that situation forced to band to create existing forms so it could become exclusively about girls being kidnapped so that we could say oh, just like the taliban in pakistan. Boko haram opposes western style education for both girls and boys. In the aftermath of the however kidnapping of the girls he loud but shallow roar of international digestibility led to a silencing of the more complex and more accurate story of this murderous movement. It is censorship to tell half the story. It is rein her to sensor china to get content. Rein her toship to force the story to fit something that already preexists. And above all in my thinking about the subtle shades of censorship america me most egregious example is the u. S. Supreme courts decision in Citizens United that money is speech. If a country decides that money is speech then truth speech in that country is dead. [applause] when i was growing up, i loved going to church. I know that sounds a bit odd for you but this is true. My family went every sunday to st. Peters Roman Catholic chapel, tall White Building on the campus of the university of nigeria. I loved the lattin prayers, the rousing songs the smell of incense. The priests and the mass the their green or red or white flowing robes, and they seemed to float into the church in procession. The chapel was run by the holy ghost fathers congregation of priests who were mostly University Lecturers and whose order, which was irish in ore gyp, had a history of social justice. So in the 1840s, for example they walked with freed slaves in haiti. The holy fathers ran a church that as far as Roman Catholic churches go, was open, progressive, welcoming. The sunday sermons were boring and comforting and safe. After mass, people would hang around hugging and gossipping in front of the church, until the sprawling church compound slowly emptied of cars. Years later after i had left home i heard that the church has changed hands. It was now run by a priest who was singularly focused on womens dressing. On sundays the bulletin no longer held 0 list of hymns but a list of clothes that women could not wear to church. No spaghetti straps. No sleeveless blouses. The priest had appointed a brigade of boys, religious police whose job it was to stand at the door of the church, examine each woman as she approached and decide who could enter and who could not. Grandmothers were turned away because their blouses were too low cut. I found it outrageous when my parents told me about this, but it was an abstract kind of outrage because i had left home, years had passed and it all seemed distant. And then i went home to vicepresident my parents, and i went to church. I wore a long skirt and a shortsleeved blouse, and an ordinary everyday outfit temp doctor of the church a young man came up to me. His expression contrived mask of righteousness that i would have found in different circumstances both very sad and very funny. He asked me to turn back. My sleeves were too short he said. I was showing too much arm. And i could not go into the church unless i had a shawl. I felt enraged. This church was part of my childhood, part of my carefully preserved enemy arrives a time filled with joy by changing so drastically it challenged my memory my own sense of my past. If i allow elfed it to change so much then i was somehow feeling my memory of it something needed to be done. So i decided to write an article about the incident in the most widely read newspaper in the region. I thought with a sense of roman take grandosty that the article would trigger action, that the University Community would finally rise up and say enough, and petition the bishop or the pope or whoever made this decision and get this priest thrown out and restore the church to a welcoming place free of the ugliness of misogyny. But even if that did not happen, even if the one dress revolution did not happen, i was sure i would at least be supported. After all many people in the Community Felt as i did. They said so in many private conversations. I was sure that all those University Women who had begun to wrap themselves up in shawls, even in the hot season and the fans did not always work, would support me. That all the men who cringed through sermons about womens breasts, would second my thoughts. But that did not happen. Instead i was astonished by the amount of disparaging feedback i received both by those within and outside the University Community. I was shocked too by how many of these responses did not so much engage with the argue. I had made but instead focused on the reasons why i did not have the right to speak at all. I was young i was a female challenging the man of god and i needed to shut up. I found it interesting that the priests repression of women and some strainers bushback to my article came from from the same impulse the control of women, the dehumanization of women. This impulse exists in our nice, liberal, literary world where for example, women writers are expected to make female characters likeable. As though the sole humanity of the female person must fit likability. So what happened after i published that article about the church the abuse, the hostility of strangers, made me let go of the foolishad that comes out with widespread support. It does not. If i had nope of the backlash that would come with writing the article about the church, would i have written it anyway . The honest answer is i dont know. But i do know for certain i would do it again today. But this time i would do it with very few expectations. I realize that the idea of speaking out of something that had to be done always with expectation of much more negativity than not. And it also made me think about why one should speak out. I would one would speak out. Why did it write the piece about the church . Because it deeply mattered to me. Because i felt that what was going on was a matter of ugly injustice. And because i believed albeit knife naively that my article would make a difference. Intent matters. The intent behind speech matters. Our reason for speaking up matters. Intent matters. I do not at all suggest that i our intent must be noble or worthy. I have never done very well with noblity but in a humane and deeply felt way our intentions must be truth. There is something empty and arid about speaking just because you can or about speaking with the sole intention to provoke. By the way to end the story of what happened in the church that day, i insisted on being let into the church. I brushed aside the religious police and i walked in and sat down and the day of course did not end well. The priest was informed of the stubborn person who was showing too much female arm. Joy in speaker, i am a small girl. Even though a man my age had to speak. I should not speak because im a fiction writer and should speak only about fiction writing. But i am as much a citizen as i am a writer. Both of those do exist. Some time they meet and sometimes they dont. The Nigerian Government recently passed a law that criminalizes homosexuality. The law was as such things are widely talkedabout in nigeria. And widely supported. The antigay bureau it was called, legitimize the language for the demonization of a group of people. The language insisted actions would follow. There was violence, people were attacked and arrested for being gay. There was also silence from many people. I decided to write about it because it matters very much to me that my fellow nigerians citizens were being attacked for no reason and because there was a possibility of them being attacked and because most of all the law had decided their citizenship was less worthy than that of others. So i decided to write about a citizen who was fortunate enough to have a voice, i hoped to try to change just one mind, to try to get one person to rethink the idea that another human being is worthy of disdain because of who that human being loved. I expected a lot of back lashed. After that Church Incident i now know to expect what comes with the territory. What did surprise me once how personal it became. People called my family to ask them to ask me to, quote, shut up. A family members boss threatened to fire her because of the piece i had written because according to the boss she came from a family that supported people evil. My experience with censorship, in my life as a private person, a person with family and friends a person who loves and is loved censorship is present in different degrees. I often sensor myself, my family members do not always believe what i do and i dont always believe what they do but we love each other and in certain conversations i choose not to say certain things because i asked myself what is the intent . What will be achieved . Stories i will not tell while certain people are alive. I could tell from. I have the right to tell from but i choose not to because of love. Because of the need to protect the people i love and to shield them from harm. But in my life as a citizen and as a writer i am less comfortable with willingly silencing myself. To choose to write in some ways is to reject science but also a process of negotiating with silence. I dont think of censoas something from without but also something within, selfcensorship, both pushes and pulls, which every writer confronts and it so in general, i will not silence myself because of the fear of consequences, but i am willing to acknowledge the possibility of those consequences. When i wrote my second novel, half of the yellow sun i was prepared for backlash because i was writing about the contested history. The consequences today are that in some circles my nigerian patriotism is questions. Because i speak on the quality of men and women and an advocate of the rights of gay people to live their life on the continent of africa my true africanists is questioned in some circles. These are consequences that i can live with. But what about my own complicity in acts of silence . I teach a writing workshop every year. I make a conscious effort to have diversity of voices because i believe the way we see the world is shaped by our experiences of the world. For two years ago unmanned came he was a journalist, working class, shrewd, intelligent and. One of the workshop participants wrote a story, a story without a plot. The celebration of language, medication and growing up in a rural countryside. I found it beautiful. He was perplexed by it. This is one particular story, he said. Nothing happens in it. Most of all it is not teaching us anything. Now that i think back on it i am ashamed of my response to him. Well, i said, i am sorry the story does not teach you how to build a house or how to get a job. My response was shaped by mainstream ideas, fashionable idea among those of us who make literature and who teach literature and promote literature. That to question the usefulness of literature is philistinism of the purest form. My response in its shameful snobbery was exactly sat. I was silencing him. I was telling him he had no standing on which to ask that question and had proved himself a listing philistine. Im could tell he was unconvinced. In thinking about it i remembered a story from my childhood stories that had obvious moral lessons. Stories we read in class and were made to answer questions. The first when invariably being what is the moral lesson from this story . I have been asked that question about my own work, about my novel mostly in nigeria, mostly in africa. What is the moral of the story . My response always is it doesnt have an overt moral. It is up to the reader. Which i still believe. Although i do think every novel has a world view. Every novel believes something. The moral lessons, we dont want to go into the territory. What he was asking that day at the workshop was a much bigger and i think very important question. Does it matter . Does writing matter . Does literature matter . There are schools in different parts of the world today that are increasingly doubting the teaching of art and literature in favor of the sciences and mathematics, the disciplines the lead to reliable employment. Maybe the question came from the general idea of usefulness as a concrete thing. So he was right in questioning the usefulness of that meditative peace and i was wrong in closing off a question. I do not have to justify what i value. The idea that literature is a secret code and you get it or you dont, which is what i like to call the over privilegeing of literature because the truth is that there are many many intelligent, good, kind people in the world who do not value literature. Even more who are not illiterate. We talk of literature, we could begin to soften the edges of our definition. What does it mean to be useful . Does usefulness end in the concrete . If something does not ultimately lead to a job does that mean it is not useful . Week zealands are not a collection of logical bones and flesh. We are emotional beings as much as we are physical beings. Food and shelter matter. What else matters . And so i wish i had not silenced him. I wish i had engage him. I wish i had told him what i now think which is that our definition as useful is too narrow. Our idea of what the lesson should be, stories to teach us and stories do matter we are all human is a lesson, we are more alike than we think is a lesson. We are different in how we dream is a lesson. I read for many reasons, one of which is to be consoled. Consolation is useful. Consolation is necessary. If i had engaged kenny g i would know that i had tried. I would not think less of him because he defines useful in a way that is different from the way i define it. Actually i would very much like to learn concrete useful things because my knowledge of the ms. Sadly limited. I would not want to live if i were not able to have the consolation stories give me. So this reason, i will stand and i will speak for the rights of everyone, everyone to tell his or her story. Thank you for listening. From rack applause] [applause] we will bring up Andrew Solomon and Suzanne Nozzel to interview of the one. Chimamanda ngozi adichie. What you may have felt concerned about having to come out to give this talk i feel concerned to think of any questions the rises to a level of what you just said. It was so exquisitely phrase and profound and i thank you for that. My ego is even more blemished. Let me begin with some things from the lecture i was interested in your description of comfort and the american addiction to comfort and the ways in which censorship does emerge in the United States, something many of us in this room are deeply aware of. And the question of a society in which there is more openness to pain and discomfort as you characterized that. I wonder if you can explain, is the nature of social censorship not listen to joy joy comes from government but social censorship and selfcensorship different from our is here . Ihow is here . I dont think nigeria is open is not necessarily a good thing or that i think of it as america. Or nigeria is not good. I dont think it is that simple. I do think that in nigeria went back home, people were sometimes they would Say Something and i found the american part of me go and to the people it wasnt what they had said, i think that it is simply a different way of being an seeing. In nigeria people are not as i think they it is well meaning. This is a society that because of its history and the way it is has its roots in the coming together of people constantly making and remaking itself. There is something troubling about it because i think it refuses to go deep. The intention is good but it refuses to go deep. In nigeria on the other hand i dont think there is such that thing, people go deep anyway. Do you think the experience that you have is one of feeling slightly out of place in both societies . Have you become american in some ways in the eyes of the nigerians . Joy your main nigerian in the eyes of americans . What is it like to occupy that intermediate territory . I think i dont know actually. Because i spend more time in nigeria now i dont think i do remember when i went back the first time after graduating from college, my parents were disappointed i did not have an american accent. It was a waste of time. My cousins too. But i had friends, have lived in the u. S. And comfortable here, and things about america that i love. I like the idea of having all and milk as an example. Which in nigeria my friends would be like all and milk. The idea of of having options such an american thing. I remember when i first went to the supermarket i thought why do these people need an entire aisle from new of see real cereal . Conflicts i dont know that i can answer that question. I do think for me it is not just having lived in the u. S. Spending time in both places now. It is really that i am a storyteller and always felt from the time i was a child that i was slightly removed from things. It is not closeknit family and friends and i am one step removed. I am never joy situated anywhere. It has to do with this easy storytelling as a moral act . Immoral act . When king sound very grand i get very uncomfortable. No. Do i think of it as the moral act . I will have to think about that. Speaking get back to me. I will. On telling the stories you have told you have often spoken gave a pep talk about the peril of a single story and part of what you are talking about here is the nature of trying to bring a diversity of understandings in to any story and to recognize how many different ways there are to approach it. I wonder if you can Say Something about the way, shifted revolves, what is we can do either as writers or citizens to break down the kind of tyranny of a single story that you have addressed. I think we should listen more. I really do. Less time is spent listening really. It is very easy to very easy to dismiss the rules that power plays in the stories that are told and how they are told. I think it is very easy to dismiss it and to think for example in this country, it would be lovely if we stopped pretending that anybody can speak about anything. It really depends on the level of power occupied. [applause] i speak to myself as a writer, it is important to me that i listen, important that i try to look at almost every opportunity as a possibility, a hopeless fief of peoples stories. Which i think is lovely because what it does is force is you to not so much in have another persons reality but forces you to engage with another persons reality, if you feel intent on stealing peoples stories, people who love them so often, and sort of invent this world. And as right as we would do less of what i like to call hiding behind us. There is a certain kind of willful refusal to engage going back to comfort. A lot of contemporary writing particularly in the u. S. Hides behind dark so think about america being a country that has been at war forever but look at the contemporary literature and you wouldnt know it. Really. It is a kind of carries the kind of hiding behind arch and so stories are all you know i dont know if i am in a position to tell people what to do. But i would love to. I have dreams of dictatorship. About listening, my mother has been dead 25 years but always said when i was little a good listener is always more interesting than a good talker. It is a fundamental skills. And somewhat neglected part of literature. Agreed deal of talking goes on but particularly interested in the way in which that listening has to be in effect addressed to those who have less power because the people who have more power are already being heard and i wonder if you have the sense that part of your role as a writer is to amplify the voice is or points of view that might not otherwise make it to the surface. I hope that icahn. I hope that i have. I hope that i will. I want to something is important to me, i also think the question of listening, i want to address the people with power. They do the listening. The people without power dont have a choice. They listen. I use an example of nigeria again constantly watching and listening and asking questions. Buy call privileged nigerians with domestic staff and when people talk about the world, anybody can speak about anything, i think to myself my driver can speak about anything really. But there is nothing that he says because of the position he occupies in the world, the kind of respect and the kind of power, what i would see. And to deny that kind of thing, i think there is a sense in which especially when we live in a kind of small close universe we talked about things, how we talk about all human beings then you have a reality of the world and it is such a lot. For me it is what i would love to do. I dont have as much power as i would like. I am still working on this. What i would like, it is very easy and joy some sort of maliciously eagles thing. It is simply you are in a position of power, it is so much easier not to know, because the reason what is going on in baltimore, many people in america are aghast and i think in years, you wouldnt be a guest. Or part of the reason part of the reason that i think people are, again, is not because they are evil people malicious people, but their position makes a certain kind of obliviousness part of their thing, you dont need to know. Theres always that difficulty when the people who are powerful is presuming to speak for those who are disenfranchised even if their objective is simply to speak the truth to power than to allow those voices to reach those who otherwise couldnt see them. There are always questions of how much power when has this you said that in a joking way but it is true on the one hand you are in some ways very powerful land on the other hand in some ways constantly facing forms of disenfranchisement. Do you have a sense of moving between your position of power and another position or use it securely in a position of power from which you can fool all of these things in . Canpull all of these things in . Can i have another option . I think i am the time and place in my life when i am powerful and there are times and places when i am not. Seriously. I wasnt joking about not having as much power, i would like a lot more power than i have mr. Is so much. Anything i can do to help . We can talk about it afterwards. I think just in the identity groups that we occupied in the world i like to say three walls, race class gender. Class i occupy a position of privilege, gender and race not so much but it depends on where i am. It is always contexture will. In nigeria, i am deeply aware of the limitations of gender. I am constantly fighting battles, whether arguing with the security man, having the sort of deepseated arguments with political bigwigs who say things a woman cannot be in nigerian space. When i am outside nigeria i dont think i am much more as the presence that is just really annoying. [applause] what is interesting about race is for me particularly who grew up in a country that wasnt steeped in race, the ideas that you are never sure when it is about race and never quite sure when it is not. It is the most annoying fitting. If you are in nigeria and i walked into a store and somebody, the storekeeper is rude, i am thinking of the possible options are he is having a bad day, the storekeeper is just an idiot and is rude to everybody. If that happened here i would think the storekeepers having a bad day, the storekeepers and indeed, the storekeeper doesnt like black people. Having that option is too annoying. But, given that youve been living in baltimore where the issue of race has been particularly in the headlines of late, what is your sense of what that constant question of race does to peoples sense of enfranchisement and of disenfranchisement, does it give you an additional feeling of powerlessness in a way . No because i dont want to pretend i did experience experience the deprivations of the party to the deprivations of american racism. I dont experience them the way people who live in west baltimore do and to pretend i do would be a lie but i do think the questions the structural things in american history, increasingly i find myself asking when you have police men or whatever ways shoot a black man or choke him or whatever it and is lying dead and there is ascents they dont look at him as equally cumin as themselves. Even they have more emotion. [laughter] so yeah. I mean, we can talk about racism as a Structural Force and all of that but increasingly i keep thinking well, what is it doing to i dont want to sound dramatic but to our souls . It is, it is the profound question i think what does it do to our souls not to see all other human beings as human. And when you talk about being able to translate in some way the voices of the powerless so that they can be heard in the ears of the powerful i think thats precisely the thing that youre turning around, is that very inhumanity. What what do you think the and, of course weve seen, i mean, penn itself, just to put in a word, on the curtailment of press freedoms in ferguson. So there was a real feeling that in ferguson that there was a closing down of reporting a closing down of discourse a closing down of access in ways that are extremely troubling and, i think, extremely frightening and that really do constitute a form of american censorship and intrusion into peoples abilities to tell the stories and your plural of what was happening there. I dont know whether the same thing has happened in the same degree in baltimore but it seems to during, when was this sort of when reporters went to ferguson immediately after the shooting and tried to report on what was going on, they were blocked from going into certain neighborhoods, they were kept away from scenes where people were making statements, they were corralled away from Police Headquarters and so on. They were denied a great deal of access to which they legally had the right. Its a very, its a very frightening episode to see how, in effect a local Police Department was not only implicated in that horrifying story, but also was in many ways culpable of trying to turn the National Discourse about it away from the issue of inhumanity and away from the question of how People Living one way cannot understand the humanity of people who are living another way. Its an urgent matter. What about identity . I feel like identity kind of runs through a great deal of what you write. Do you have a sense when youre here were talking about class, race and gender as the sort of three primary aspects, but do you have a sense that you have to work toward an identity that you pull together and that gains some coherence or do you think as a storyteller that that outsiderness you describe itself becomes an identity . Thats interesting. I think both. I think my sense of just being one step removed from things is simply who i am, its part of who i am. The other part i when im asked about identity and identity being part of my work sometimes i want to im not sure that i i dont know that, i mean i suppose if youre black and you write about black people, then it becomes about identity. [laughter] i mean, i dont know that i, i dont know that i identity you know, i have many problems in my life, but i dont think that identitys one of them. [laughter] [applause] so, you know, i and heres the thing actually, which is interesting. I think this, you know, being tied up in knots about identity is a particularly american phenomenon. [laughter] and for those of us who [applause] who, you know, who are in america but are not quite of america, it can be very interesting. I didnt really learn about such things as who are you and what are you until i came to the u. S. [laughter] when i was in nigeria, it was just kind of like [laughter] my identity as a woman is important to me, my language is something i deeply love. Im actually quite, im actually quite conservative in my views about, you know, my ethnicity. I go back and i want to see our tribal lands. I know, i know my history, that sort of thing matters a lot to me. My nigerianness matters to me, my africanness matters to me. My blackness merits to me. If i matters to me. If i hadnt come to america, i dont think it would have. But that said, i think of myself as a writer i think of myself as a dreamer i think of myself so i dont know that i, i think whats interesting is when youre sitting there and andrew, im sure that you will know what this is like because you write, when youre sitting there in front of your computer hoping to write a good sentence, you really dont remember that youre black and african and [laughter] youre thinking i want to write a damn good sentence. And so i think that my Creative Process i dont know that i you know im not battling with identity. Im really not. Well, i dont want to suggest that youre battling with identity. You did just cocurate a festival of African Writers that was meant to give some representation in the u. S. To African Voices. Is there any such thing as an african voice . I mean, what is it that youre doing not in your writing i dont know, we need to ask [laughter] no i mean, well, i suppose theyre two different things. Thinking of identity as a personal thing and i dont want to be dismissive of people who actually have genuine issues with identity. I think the reason i dont is i was born, i was raised, theres a kind of rootedness that i had. And i know people that dont have it. And i also think searching for identity can make the beautiful right thing. The writers who i love and admire for whom its really about searching for identity, but thats like my i think my, as a citizen and as the person who occupies the world which is my rule in being cocurator identity matters then because its important to me, for example, that african stories be told by african people. [applause] that matters a lot to me. And i find myself, for example having this kind of actually mostly unreasonable rage [laughter] when, this is true im watching the news and africa, something in africa is being covered and there isnt an african. And its so interesting to me that theres something about congo and what happens. Heres a belgian whos a congo expert. And im constantly [laughter] i think to myself, and, you know i wish belgians who are congo experts well. [laughter] i do. But, you know you think it matters. And, again, this is a question of power because if im in nigeria and the u. S. Is being covered, its americans who are telling the story. If im in nigeria and france is being covered, its a french person telling the story. The opposite is the case when it comes to the part of the world that i come from, and i do feel quite strongly about that. And its not even just about the personal [applause] irritation. Its also, i think it does a disservice to the people who are hearing the stories because you miss out on a lot of nuance and context. There are many stories i read about nigeria, and i just think no, this is nonsense. [laughter] and then i think about the people who are reading it who dont have the content that i have, and i think a disservice is being done to them. And how are we ever going to really come to understand one another if were not being told stories in a way that is full and fully done . [laughter] so im very excited about this i was very pleased when jacub asked me and i by the way, it has been wonderful and actually the best so far, you. [applause] and this reminds me, this reminds me of the nigerian musician, the great great belacuti was asked what his favorite kind of music was and he said western Classical Music. And the interviewer was surprised because and he said, you know, Classical Music gives musicians a kick, but African Music gives everybody a kick. [laughter] and i think this is why, maybe this is why the festival with the african influence has been so much fun for people. [laughter] african literature can give everyone a kick too. So were all set there. Do you, do you want to tell us a little bit about what youre working on or no. No. [laughter] do you want to share what youre working on . [laughter] i do, but im not sure anyone wants to hear it. [laughter] do you [laughter] you know what this is, im actually quite superstitious. Right. Really. Im very superstitious and i just think that i dont like talking about things that are still in progress. And maybe this is part of my ebol sensibility. I think you talk about it, and itdisappears. [laughter] well, lets go back to, lets go back to what you talked about in your in your words. I want to quickly cover, because we will soon be out of time, but the boko haram questions. And you spoke of the absence of African Voices explaining whats happening. And i wonder what it would take for us to have a more authentic understanding of whats gone on there. I mean, i was very struck by and im sure that you read the articles that came out at the time the fact that there was a boko haram massacre at about the same time as the Charlie Hebdo episode in paris, and the Charlie Hebdo episode in paris was on the front page of every newspaper around the world and the ravaging in nigeria was given, you know, rather thin cover in most of the wen press. So what is the structure of the western press. And how are we to interpret boko haram in a way that simply isnt some intrusive belgian kind of weighing in with his point of view . You know, ive actually found the older i get the less interested i am in how the west sees africa and the more interested i am in how africa sees itself. [applause] this is true. I still, i used to spend a lot of Emotional Energy being angry [laughter] but now, but now, you know, now im actually much more interested in kenya covering knew jeer is ya than nigeria than i am in the u. S. Covering nigeria, really. I think one of the ways theres power, again the fact, for example, that if a foreign journalist comes to nigeria and a nigerian journalist wants to get an interview with the nigerian president , the foreign journalist is more likely to get the interview. Thats the problem. How do we solve it . By just, we need to just stop being stupid [laughter] and i im sorry, i really would love to be more educated on this problem, but i dont know that i have the solution. Uni, the idea that you know, the idea that what happened many paris was on the front cover of newspapers in the u. S. And what happened in, somewhere in nigeria wasnt i mean, the practical thing that is harder to get access to the part of nigeria thats been overrun by boko haram. And its much easier to go to paris. But also i think that we need to talk about whos telling the story. I think that the people who make the decisions in the newsrooms just feel a closer affinity to france than they do to nigeria. It count make them evil or bad its just what it is. I wish that boko haram had been on the cover of every african newspaper. But it wasnt. And thats thats what i want to talk about increasingly. Because theres a lot of, you know, and i do and im not saying that im sort of becoming this isolationists and im not. I do think that the west matters, i do think that engagement matters. But i think increasingly im not as interested as i used to be in this idea that somehow the western gaze is what should be the abiding interest and subject of people on the continent of africa. And also what it means then is we start to cut those really ugly, dangerous colonial times. Theres still so much about the continent that is [applause] you know we, you cant fly i mean, you know. People think oh, you want to go to cote divoire, you might have to go to paris first. [laughter] its, there are just things that are outdated and i just find myself so much more interested in thinking and talking about those things than i am in bemoaning the fact, for example that the coverage of ebola in the American Press was atrocious. It really was. I dont want to get started but ill do a little rant. [laughter] yeah. I mean, having said that, of course i think half of the yellow sun transforms the way that many people who are not african understood at least that part of the history of your country. So although you write for an internal audience as well, i think one of the great triumphs and great achievements of your work has been that it has allowed people who are not african also to have a sense of intimacy with experiences that had previously seemed remote; in effect, to understand the full humanity in them that might otherwise have remained. That makes me very happy. Thank you. [applause] im receiving signals that its time to wrap up. I want, in wrapping up, to say to you as a gay american, i am deeply grateful for the stance you have taken around homosexuality in nigeria. [applause] and to say it gives me great hope and to say how thrilled i am to see you again after far too long and to be on this stage. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Its been lovely sharing the stage with you. [cheers and applause] [cheers and applause] ladies and gentlemen [inaudible] the festival is now over. I want to thank you my staff kim, Danny Isabelle and kenny. You guys were amazing. Thank you. Thanks so much. [applause] [inaudible conversations]