Sunday Tribune

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie sparks outrage with essay

JAMAL GROOTBOOM jamald.grootboom@inl.co.za

Award-winning Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has come under fire for an essay, titled “It Is Obscene”, that was published on her website on Tuesday.

In the three-part essay, Adichie addresses two unnamed authors whom she took under her wing and who later criticised her for transphobic comments made in a 2017 interview where she said “trans women are trans women”.

She was also widely criticised by members of the LGBTQI+ community for the comment. It was labelled transphobic and her feminism described as lacking intersectionality

One of the author’s Adichie addresses in the essay is Akwaeke Emezi, who is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns. Adichie details how she took Emezi under her wing after they attended one of her workshops in 2015, as she saw them as a “bright young Nigerian feminist“.

However, their relationship turned sour in 2017 after Adichie’s comments in an interview on Channel 7 about trans women. She had also said that “of course they are women, but in talking about feminism and gender and all of that, it’s important for us to acknowledge the differences in the experience of gender”.

Emezi and the other unnamed author called Adichie out for her comments on social media and for sharing alleged private emails from Emezi in which they apologised for their comments and said they wanted to find a way to fix their relationship.

Adichie had asked Emezi to remove her name from the bio of their novel Freshwater. Adichie also stated that “asking that my name be removed from your biography is not sabotaging your career. It is about protecting my boundaries of what I consider acceptable in civil human behaviour.”

While Adichie’s fans praised her for the essays online, members of the LGBTQI+ didn’t agree with how she handled the situation.

Taking to their Instagram stories, Emezi said: “So apparently Adichie published emails from myself and another writer who was in her workshop without our consent.

“Like I said, I won’t be reading it because it wasn’t meant for me, it was designed to incite hordes of transphobic Nigerians to target me…

“Adichie is an agbaya (bad, elderly person), full stop. With her whole transmisic (irrational hatred of transgender people) chest.

“She will not stop because this kind of hatred… This kind of bigotry, does not stop until its targets are dead.

“No matter how much the other Nigerians try to gaslight you into thinking that this is hyperbole, those of us who live inside it know very well that the stakes are life and death.

“So I will keep pointing out true things because stories can also be war and silence is not a reasonable weapon for me when trans people are dying and being targeted for even more death.”

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2021-06-20T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-06-20T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://sundaytribune.pressreader.com/article/282239488584948

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