Class, not tribe, is our big dividing line

Celebrated Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the author of two novels, Purple Hibiscus (2003) and Half Of A Yellow Sun (2006), and a collection of short stories, The Thing Around Your Neck (2009). Excerpts from an interview:

You have spoken about how colonialism has been responsible for many of Nigeria’s problems.
Well, people were divided before. Colonialism just cemented those divisions. And it also created new divisions. Creating a country by simply drawing arbitrary lines is bound to be problematic. I am not suggesting that the White man came and created divisions. But I think there is a difference when you are managing your own divisions and when somebody imposes them on you. So you have to deal with new structures that you haven’t been necessarily prepared for.

In your works you have often tried to show how Western powers continue to hold sway over their erstwhile colonies.
This kind of dominance and sway is not just in Nigeria. I would probably say it is in India too. It is not just about who determines the price of things in the international market and issues of tarrifs. But it is also cultural dominance. If we have a system, like in Nigeria, where the education system is modelled after the British system, then we are under the West’s cultural power. We are raising children who will value certain things, things that show colonialism still exists. This is problematic. If I could change things, I would change cultural power rather than political power. I want to change what people value and how they value them.

Your novels often explore class divisions.
Class is a division that people often overlook. When people talk about Africa, they talk about tribes. Yes, tribes exist, but class is a much stronger division. People intermarry between ethnic lines but very rarely across class lines. And this is no Nigerian issue. It is a global issue and I want to change it. I want people to think differently about class.

How difficult was it to work on Half Of A Yellow Sun?
Half Of A Yellow Sun is a very different from my first book. It was a personal book. My grandfathers died in the Biafra war and my parents underwent much pain during the war. I was born seven years after the war. But I feel I inherited something from it. Writing the war scenes was difficult. I was constantly thinking of my family. It is something to research for a book and something else to read about a refugee camp, in one of which my grandfather died. I cried often when working on the book.

You are often compared to Chinua Achebe. Do you get fed up with the comparisons?
People make comparisons because they don’t know of any other African writer. They call him the father of African literature, and it is funny because I don’t know who the mother is. I don’t understand why African literature needs a father in the first place. Personally, he is a very important influence in my life. We were from the same state; he was a friend of my parents; I lived in the house where his family lived. But it not very surprising when you consider how small the academic group in Nigeria is. Everyone keeps asking me how it was growing up in the same house where Achebe lived. And because I love making up things, I started telling stories about how when I used to go to the bathroom, I would hear literary voices telling me what to write.