good evening, from los angeles. i'm tavis smiley. tonight a conversation with best selling author, chimamanda ngozi adichie. she is praised for the window she opens to other cultures particularly the interception of race and integration. it will be a movie with lupita nyong'o and making a premier on various starz channels. the conversation is coming upright now. ♪

contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ best selling novelist chimamanda adichie is an acclaimed author. one of the best ten books of 2013. "half of a yellow sun" deals

with the civil war and was turn sbood a movie. it can be seen on various starz channels. we'll start our conversation with a scene from "half of a yellow sun." >> this is the end of corruption. >> they probably shot him. >> he was a friend of my father. >> bbc is calling it a coup. they have a point. >> it was not aware of government. >> the bbc should ask the people. >> if we had more men like him in this country, we would not be where we are today. >> isn't he a communist? >> you americans are so predictable. >> how does it feel seeing your work on the big screen? >> not too bad. >> how do they deal with the

adaptation? >> i like it. i wasn't sure i would. you never knew. i like it. i think it captures nigerian women beautifully. i think it's different. it's a different thing from the book. i wasn't expecting the film to be exactly the book, but i think it captures the spirit of the book. >> what was it about the book that was essential for you to not be lost in the film? >> the sense that when people are in a war, in this case, to retain their humanity. i wanted the novel to be a human story. i think the film does that. it's about war, which i think is important. it's really how people in the middle of war, people get married and fall in love. >> you may have answered the question i wanted to ask, but i'll ask you anyway. you weren't born in '67. you don't have to be around to write about history, obviously,

but what was it about that particular war you wanted to bring to life in your novel, your text? >> i wasn't alive, you are right. i feel as though i inherited the shadow of the period. my grandfather died in the war. my parents lost everything they owned. my family's past was affected by the war. i wanted to remember. i think nigeria has a willful forget. we don't remember. i think it's important to remember. i think, in some ways what i wanted the film to do is tell a human story and become a collective way of remembering what happened. >> you said a moment ago, i find it fascinating, it is something that is applicable not just to the people of nigeria and africa, but true of americans. this notion of willful forgetting. willful forgetting.

what is behind that? what motivates it in your country? >> i think the people who -- the war is fairly recent when you think about it. people active in the war are still alive. the people for whom it is beneficial if we don't remember. i think this idea that everybody wants to become comfortable. let things be. we all need to be comfortable, which i think applies to the u.s. a sense in which american history. we are also to forget it. everybody is to be kept comfortable. i think in nigeria, i feel a contested part of history. people, there are still differing versions of what happened. because of that, it's more comfortable if we don't talk about this. i think -- i think it's important to remember. the consequences are not talking ant what happened to us.

it's actually much more in danger than the consequences of talking about it. >> what do you regard -- what do you see those consequences as today. the consequence of not talking about it? >> we repeat history. many of the things that happened in nigeria, if we go back to 1967, we can explain them. we have politicized it. we have politicians who use ethnicity as a tool. it's happening now. i think we are very conscious of what happened 50 years ago, we are less likely to repeat it. i think that it's -- the spirit must be remembered. >> since you spent time in both places, the notion of willful forgetting that you raised a moment ago, compare and contrast how it plays out in america. you talked about the nigerian

example. the notion where it plays out in our country where race is concerned. >> i wanted to -- i wrote about that in my most recent novel. i wanted to make fun of the idea that racism is the subject in this country that is most burdened by so many things. it just seems to me it's so burr burdened the way to deal with it is pretend it's not there. it's not so much that people have forgotten, it's that people choose to think they have forgotten. i don't just mean slavery. often the conversation about race in this country is reduced to slavery. i don't think that's what it's about. i think after slavery, i think the present. they are very clear. they are not really confronted

because people are uncomfortable. so, there's a way of talking ant this and it seems to me that it's comfortable. i think it's very dangerous. it's important to have conversations. people talk in this country about having the conversation about race and i don't think anybody does. i think the reason is to have it, people have to be willing to be uncomfortable. i think in this country, people who are not of african decent or people whose ancestors are not slaves, there's a difference. those people are not willing to be uncomfortable. >> are there conditions that you think -- are there conditions that you can imagine that might make it possible for those persons to be willing to be made uncomfortable or is this a conversation -- i mean, the

reason i ask that question, you are suggesting this issue will never be addressed. >> i think people -- i think it can take a certain kind of leadlead lead leadership. it will take time. i think it's possible. i think if you have certain kinds of leaders, i mean, a friend of mine said something about needing people to address it. there's certain kind of leaders in certain positions can make the conversation happen. i think that it is possible. it hasn't happened. people talk, it just hasn't happened. mainstream discourse. itis not being talked about in honest, open ways, i don't think. >> if it hasn't happened in the air of obama, what do you think it might require? what is it going to take to have that conversation? >> i think that obama can make it possible. it won't happen in the two years

left, but obama having become president, he occupies this fragile place. i think there's something about his being there and his being very careful. i think it says something. the way obama has gone about it is by not addressing it and direct and helpful. in some ways, the indictment of america's racial issue. he, i think as the first black man to be president has to be extra careful. the next person who, not necessarily black, but who thinks this conversation is important, i think it makes it more possible for that person. >> if that person is a woman? >> if hillary wins, yes. >> you referenced"americanah."

those who haven't read it, what is the story line here? >> it's a long story, but also social commentary. a woman living in nigeria comes to the u.s. for school. she has the man she loves who went to england. it's about many things. one of the things i wanted to do, i wanted to write about race in the u.s. and as an outsider, a person who came to the u.s. and became black. i didn't think of myself as black in nigeria. race was new for me in the u.s. i wanted to write about that and how strange it can be. but, also, i wanted to write about a kind of immigration that is familiar to me. i think when we hear about africans immigrating, we think of people running away from burned villages and war and poverty. that stirs important things. it's not the story i know. i wanted to write about the africa i know.

the middle class educated people leaving not because villages are burned, but they want nor choices. throughout human history, people left their homes looking for more. that's what i hope -- also, i think it's funny, if i may say so myself. i hope you laugh. >> when you said you didn't think of yours as black until you came to the u.s., that raises two questions. question one, what did you think of yourself as in nigeria? >> i thought of myself as nigerian and able. but, again, i think america is very interesting because it's the one place where identity is a central thing for people. it really isn't in many parts of the world. >> is that a good or bad thing that identity is important? >> i don't think it's good or bad. i think it can be good and i think it can be okay. but, i think it's because america's history as a country that has so many people. it's a country of immigrants.

everybody came from somewhere. because of that, identity becomes a thing. in nigeria, it was a thing. i thought of myself as able. i didn't think of myself as anything, really. then to come to the u.s., i became black and i also became african in the u.s. because coming from nigeria meant people said you are african, tell me about the media. i don't know anything about them. they are thousands of miles away from where i come from. >> how did you navigate, then, the journey of becoming black and becoming african once you arrived on our show. i woke up this way, in our country. so, how did you navigate becoming black, all of a sudden? >> for me, learning that i was black, i have to say to people when i talk about it, i'm happily black. i wouldn't change anything about

this. this is the most beautiful thing. coming to the u.s. is realizing that this identity came with baggage. i remember my undergrad -- my first year in the u.s., i had just come. the first essay, i was in a class. the professor says this is the best essay, who wrote it? i raised my hand. he looked surprised. he didn't expect that person to be black. i guess, also, my name doesn't sound stereo typically black. it could be anything. i remember realizing, that's what it meant. black is negative stereotypes. for awhile, i didn't want to be identified as black. i found myself pushing away and wanting to be seen as nigerian. i felt that it was my way of separating myself from this group that had been stigmatized by really terrible stereotypes. what it took for me was reading

and learning and watching. i read a lot about african-american history. i watched america. and, so, i went and became -- you know what? i'm black. i'm all these other things, but i'm black. in some ways, it's a choice. i think when you are not born in the u.s. and when you are a person of african decent, in some ways identifying with black is a political choice. you are willing to acknowledge race is a reality. the people who i know -- i know immigrants from the caribbean and africa who say race doesn't matter. for me, it became a political choice. i think now, but at the same time, i think it's important that america doesn't realize there are many kinds of black, there are many ways to be black. this assumption that black is one single thing. for me, it isn't.

i think i navigate race different than someone born in the u.s. there are things for me, as a resinate as much, i think. >> that's your story in your journey of becoming black in america. the other part is the african piece. if i had a dime for every story i hear from africans about african-americans, they got independently wealthy writing about those horror stories. do you have stories about learning to get along with and embrace african-americans in this country? >> no. i am sorry to disappoint. >> i'm glad to hear that. i'm not disappointed at all. i have heard so many. >> i guess -- here's the thing. you know, african-americans are american. and there are certain things that one can generalize about

americans. it's a general, i think it has to be said, an ignorance about the world. people, you come from a different part of the world. you are like, what? nigeria? is that near honduras? i think often africans expect african-americans to somehow know more than others just because we lookalike. surely, you must know about africa. they are americans and they don't. no, i have -- i really don't. i had really good friends who are african-american and maybe has something to do with i came here to school. i had many friends in undergrad and friends in grad school. the conversations we have had are not always comfortable, but i think they are important. one of such conversations was -- i write about it in the book, i make fun of it, actually. it's one way of closing the

conversation to say, africans sold us. i think it's so simplistic. if you see there's nothing left to be said. i think saying that also negates the fact that slavery itself is an institution that benefited a particular group of people. had the evil african chiefs not sold them, they would have a way to get them across the atlantic. so, sadly, no, no horror stories. i'll have to invent some. >> no, i'm happy to hear your journey was well paved and not potholes in terms of black americans. how have you held on to that essential african part of you? the one thing america does do is offer the opportunity for you to asemilate and people come here and take the opportunity to do

that. before you know it, they forgot and left everything about who they are and were when they arrive. how have you held on to the essential african parts to you? >> refusesing to have an americ accent. when i came to the u.s., i did an american accent well. can i have water, please. then i realized, it takes so much energy. it's too much work. also, i was a fake version of myself when doing that. the thing about being the full version is you don't quite reach your potential. if you look at the energy and can i have water, i can do something useful. so, i chose the sounds. that means customer service people will say, what's that, ma'am? i just repeat myself until they understand. also, i think it's having come

here when i was 19. i think, in some ways, i was formed. being raised in a family where it was clear, my parents are lovely people. my father is a professor. it was clear we are people and this is what we are. we go to an zest reeal hometown. it's a small sense of rootness. i carry it with me. the reason i'm comfortable in the world is i carry that. >> were you sent here or did you choose to come here? >> i chose to come here because i was fleeing the study of medicine. i was supposed to be a doctor. after a year, i realized this is not working out for me. >> how did your professor daddy handle that? >> he was supportive. he already had a doctor, my sister was a doctor. i think he has doctor, pharmacist and engineer. his kids did the thing middle class africans are supposed to

do. they could sacrifice a strange one. >> how did writing become your avocation? how did you know this was your calling in the world? >> i didn't know what i didn't know. that's the one thing, that's the one thing that constantly has made me happy. it's the thing i love. happy to be published and read. it's a wonder to me that people read what i do. the thing i love is the writing. i have always loved it, always, always. >> is it always and forever going to be fiction? >> hmm. never say never. >> yeah. >> i don't know. >> i ask because the issues you raise in your novels are real-world issues and you approach it from a fictional perspective. you could have written about

them, certainly the nigerian war. >> i think fiction affords something that non-fiction doesn't. i think the stories you can tell and the -- for me, i think fiction can be truer than non-fiction. if i wrote non-fiction about the war, i would have to protect people, think about the ethics of telling certain stories. for me, fiction seems much more, i don't know, much more powerful way of getting to certain stories that are difficult. >> what, for you, is the blessing, the joy of being a writer? i hear your point that you are surprised that people pay to read your stuff. indeed they do and they pay well to read your stuff. if they weren't buying it, it never would have went to paper back. what is the joy for you in being a writer? >> i think it's the -- it's that

people read what i wrote and it means something. i mean not just entertainment, which i think is important. women read it and say to me, you make me feel stronger. or that somebody said to me once, really possible and hard to tell family what happened to her in the war. she hadn't talked about it until she wrote the book. i think it's the part that you can tell a story and can move somebody. it can top somebody's life in a way that really matters. that, i will never stop being -- i will never stop being grateful and moved by that. >> early into your career, you have this sort of a claim. you claim you have 9 million plus views of your talks on the internet. 9 million, that's a lot of views. when you have this kind of claim

so early on in your career, how do you process that and does it put a certain, for lack of better word, pressure on you in your writing? >> no. no. >> you don't feel that at all? >> the pressure is the fear i have felt from the beginning. you are sitting down, worried you are not going to make a good sentence. i don't remember these things when i'm sitting down at my desk. i enjoy people are reading the book. it's a lovely feeling. when i sit there in my study, i really don't remember. i don't remember. that terror, that comes with creating is always there. i'm sitting there thinking i will never write a good sentence again and i don't think i want to. there's a terror in truth. it's always there. no, if anything, if i finish a book or story just before it comes out, i have that anxiety

of oh, my lord, what have i done. >> you are doing it well and we are all the better for how well you do it. a national best seller, "americanah" is the novel. her book turned into a film now "half of a yellow sun" is seen on various starz channels. tune in to see that. an honor to have you. that's our show tonight. as always, keep faith. ♪ >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. >> i'm tavis smiley. join me for conversation with two-time oscar winner, hilary swank. that's next time. see you then.

announcer: "imagemakers" is made possible by the members of kqed. [ pencil scratching ] [ muffled rock music plays ]