How Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie subverts expectations of traditional Nigerian women
Canada Reads 2024 alumni Kudakwashe Rutendo and Mirian Njoh weigh in on a long awaited novel
WARNING: This article and audio interview may affect those who have experienced sexual violence or know someone affected by it.
The wait is over for Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's hugely anticipated return to fiction. Known for her detailed representation of Nigerian women and culture, Dream Count follows four women who live large on the page and resonated deeply with two Canada Reads alumni, Kudakwashe Rutendo and Mirian Njoh.
Adichie is the bestselling author of novels Purple Hibiscus, Half of A Yellow Sun and Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction in 2013. Since then, Adichie has turned to nonfiction, writing powerful essays that became Ted Talks and short books, including We Should All Be Feminists, which was sampled in Beyoncé's song Flawless and inspired a T-shirt from Dior.
Dream Count is Adichie's return to fiction after 12 years and it weaves the perspectives of four women, moving between Nigeria, Guinea and the United States.
Rutendo and Njoh reunited on The Next Chapter with Antonio Michael Downing to discuss the complex feelings and reflections the women of Adichie's fiction brought up.
For those that have been living under a literary rock, what can you tell us about Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie?
Kudakwashe Rutendo: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a polarizing Nigerian American writer. Her breakout Americanah made huge waves in the literary world and then it was felt like Americanah, Half of the Yellow Sun, her prose is singular and she manages to invoke so much of being Nigerian American, or just being Nigerian into her writing and showing the culture and viewing it in an honest way where you're not coddling it — you're showing its best parts, you're critiquing it. I think that's the honest way to love if you're showing the deficits and the whole parts all in one and she manages to illuminate that in her prose and in her work.
And in a subtle way as well where the culture is the writing. She's been on the scene forever and we've been waiting for this book forever.
She manages to invoke so much of being Nigerian American into her writing ... in an honest way.- Kudakwashe Rutendo
Mirian, there are four women in this book. I've heard it described as four interlocking novellas. Each section is about one of these women. First up, we meet Chiamaka and as the title suggests, she's tallying up her dream count, the men that she's loved and lost. What kind of entry did she give you into this novel?
Mirian Njoh: I think she was a great opener because I think was the strongest voice to me. Her story stuck with me the greatest and it's interesting 'cause each of them has different themes that stood out very strongly and hers always seemed to me to be the idea of pursuit. On a superficial level, she's a travel writer, so there's just a level of pursuit and going to different places and exploring and capturing and documenting.
But she also has that same fervor for seeking and pursuit in her personal life and in the loves that she's seeking. And it's interesting how she flips the notion of a body count, which is something that's often weaponized against women, particularly, and she turns it into a dream count when she recalls the past loves of her life and the love that she's been seeking in these people.
Three of the main characters move between Nigeria and America as Chimamanda Adichie does herself. The three women are connected by friendship and family and they're all struggling to some extent with this same stuff. They're all trying to find something, some degree of being seen and almost always by men because they see each other really well. What brings those three characters together in terms of what they're seeking?
MN: What you're saying is they're seeking to be, to love, to be loved and to be seen. And I think that is kind of the beauty of the way that their stories are interwoven and I think that their stories are truly dependent on each other, they each sustain each other. Because when you look outside of the bubble of these three women and the safety, the love, the vulnerability and just the rawness that exists between them, they are truly themselves with each other.
But then you look at their chosen family dynamic and then you look at their biological family dynamics or even their cultural dynamics and you see how they can't fit. Some of them are actively avoiding their parents and siblings, actively avoiding their aunts. Even with one of the characters who leaves Nigeria and she seeks respite in the U.S., ironically enough, she doesn't find it.
They're seeking to be, to love, to be loved and to be seen.- Mirian Njoh
There's a clash here because they are essentially very non-traditional women who are trying to do a very traditional thing, which is fall in love, get married, have a baby, things like things around that.
KR: I also wonder if this might be a new traditional way to be a woman because I'd also say that a lot of their values were distinct from just clear cut Western values. It was interesting. One of my cousins got traditionally married so it was funny for me weighing the values of that.
There is a difference. I feel like these women go against the traditional grain in many ways and I think they also subvert the Western grain as well because they're Nigerian.
There's a class thing happening here … but there's also a gender thing going on here, right?
KR: I don't think we can talk about being a traditional Igbo culture, but also any African culture without getting into gender politics because they're so ingrained in gendered roles and gendered expectations and even in this book, it's a huge aspect. And I think it's often what the women are rebelling against or sometimes falling into because it's their safety. It's what you understand.
I think it's often what the women are rebelling against or sometimes falling into because it's their safety.- Kudakwashe Rutendo
MN: It's interesting if we look at our outlier Kadiatou and we think about gender because on one hand, I would say she is, in the most extreme sense, subject to gender practices because she undergoes female genital mutilation.
But then that also ends up being part of the key that gets her to this next phase of her life, this thing that in a way is like her American Dream. But then the ironic thing is that once again, that whole dynamic of her gender comes into play when she ends up embroiled in a sexual assault scandal. Her identity and character is assassinated and she is called so many things, a con artist, a prostitute. And we see the system really ring her out.
Do you also seek a "merging of souls", as Chiamaka says?
KR: I think that everyone should seek fulfillment and I say this knowing that I don't believe that… Also, I don't think it was the message of the book. What really got to me is this idea of a dream count. I was like, it's just not disqualifying the affections that we felt. I think oftentimes you're focused on ends like it had to have been a relationship or it had to have been fulfilling, or we have to have dated or just all these things that are so inconsequential.
For me, it was like all the things that make you tender, you should honour them. All the people who have given you any tenderness.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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