YouSaid · the spoken record

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

lines on the record: 59
first: 2022-01-16
most recent: 2022-01-16
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Anchors in my life, right? So my nephew calls me one day and he says, Auntie, he was upset. And he says, Auntie, there are people saying that grandpa and grandma died as punishment for you because you're transfooded. And you know, there's a kind of rage that is new to me now in the face of grief. I just thought. I think I'm okay with being insulted because I think it's part of, but it just fell to me, this is a no-go area. You do not say that about my parents who have died. I mean, I just, I lost it. So in a In a very sort of angry. 3 a.m. in the morning phase, I wrote that essay. And can I just say I have no regrets? I would write it again, exactly as I wrote it. That's the background to what these two people did. But I think for me, the essay then became about something bigger.”
2022-01-16 · Pod Save America · Offline: Chimamanda Adichie on the Death of Good Faith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This was then said to be transfunded, but for me what was just shocking was that these people who knew me, these two writers, then went on social media and just started writing utter nonsense about how I wanted to kill trans women and how I was a murderer. It was upsetting and quite hurtful, I have to say, but I thought, you know what, this is how it works now. So just, you know, just move on. And then my parents died. My father died in June of last year. My mother died in March. And it's just really completely changed everything for me. I feel that I've become a different person in so many ways because my parents were such central”
2022-01-16 · Pod Save America · Offline: Chimamanda Adichie on the Death of Good Faith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of them kind of became a person that I would ask to come to dinner at my house and lunch and I would talk to her about things because she was a young feminist and I at the time believed very much in talking to young feminists. And so we would have these conversations. I think I took on a role of a mentor of sorts. And the other writer who didn't necessarily come to my house, but I supported because I would write recommendations. And then I gave an interview in London in which I was asked about trans women. And I said that I think that trans women and women have different experiences.”
2022-01-16 · Pod Save America · Offline: Chimamanda Adichie on the Death of Good Faith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I probably shouldn't say this publicly, but we should do copy and paste. You know, they're all really brilliant, so brilliant, let them into your program.”
2022-01-16 · Pod Save America · Offline: Chimamanda Adichie on the Death of Good Faith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I think what he meant was that we just talked about everything, right? We talked about, so you're writing a story, but we need to talk about the backdrop to it. We need to talk about the politics in Nigeria. I mean, anyway, so you can tell that I'm very... Passionate and proud of this workshop, and it has created a community. So in the past 10 years, there is now a community of people who went to this workshop and who have gone on to be published, who have gone on to start magazines, who are just doing things in the world and telling stories. And the only, I think the only thing that I would say is a network.”
2022-01-16 · Pod Save America · Offline: Chimamanda Adichie on the Death of Good Faith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And also, I think I just wanted to let them kind of just give them a sense of here's what I did, here's how it works, that sort of thing. So the writing workshop is not just about writing stories, which obviously, but I think stories are rooted very much in politics and in social issues. So we talk about all kinds of things. And a dear friend of mine, I love to tell this story, a dear friend of mine who visited the workshop, who's Norwegian, said to me, it's not just a writer's workshop, right? And he said, A, you're brainwashing them for good.”
2022-01-16 · Pod Save America · Offline: Chimamanda Adichie on the Death of Good Faith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And when I was growing up, I was supposed to be a doctor because when you do well in school, you're supposed to do something serious. And I wanted to be a writer, right? And I think that's the same story for so many people. And so I kind of wanted to, when I was published and started being well known in Nigeria, I thought I want to try and create this community of people who can gather in a room and realize that that thing that they want to do is perfectly normal, right? And when you're surrounded by people who want to do the same thing, you start to feel less strange and less odd.”
2022-01-16 · Pod Save America · Offline: Chimamanda Adichie on the Death of Good Faith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I've done them for 10 years, I think. And really, I just wanted to give people kind of what I didn't have when I started out, which is a community of writers. A community of writers who are not just Nigerian but African. So the workshop is kind of, I think of it as Pan-African because I started it really with my very dear dear friend who's now passed away Binyavanga Wai Naina who was a brilliant Kenyan writer and we both felt that we come from a continent where writing is still considered something odd to want to do.”
2022-01-16 · Pod Save America · Offline: Chimamanda Adichie on the Death of Good Faith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It seems to me that literature is the last thing that we can depend on to tell us the truth about who we are, because politics can no longer do that. Politicians have to lie. I mean, they have to. I'm not talking about your speeches, John.”
2022-01-16 · Pod Save America · Offline: Chimamanda Adichie on the Death of Good Faith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source