Award winning
author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in a new interview blasted a journalist for
addressing her as Mrs. Chimamanda.
The author who loves being
addressed as a feminist, insisted that her name is Miss Chimamanda Adichie, not
Mrs Chimamanda Esega – her husband’s surname.
“Before we start this
interview please, I just want to say that my name is Chimamanda Adichie. That’s
how I want it; that’s how I’m addressed, and it is not Mrs but Miss. Ms:
that’s how I want it. I am saying this, because I just got a mail from my
manager this morning. It seems that there are people who attended the church
service, and they wrote about it, addressing me as Mrs. Chimamanda (Esega). I
didn’t like that at all. So my name is Chimamanda Adichie, full stop!” she told
the SUN newspaper reporter.
When the interviewer
said, “but people know that you’re married. As an Igbo girl, you know our
culture”, Chimamanda aptly responded with
“What does
our culture do? Let me tell you about our culture. This thing that you are
calling our culture –that when you marry somebody, you’ll start calling her
Mrs. It is not our culture; it is Western culture. If you want to talk about
our culture, you need to go to people in real Igbo land. But it is true. My
grandfather’s name is David. His name is also Nwoye. They call him Nwoye Omeni.
Omeni was his mother. You know why? It is to help distinguish him,
because there are often many wives. So, it was his mother that they used to
identify him. They know that all of these people came from the same compound,
but whose child is this one. You may go and ask people who is Nwoye Omeni, and
they’ll tell you it is my grandfather. So, conversation about culture is a long
one. I don’t even want to have it.”
Source: Daily Post
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