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Feb. 6th, 2013 04:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI read Half of a Yellow Sun a few years ago and was completely unable to talk about it adequately. The short version is that it's a novel about the Nigerian Civil War in 1967 and the establishment of the short-lived Republic of Biafra, and about the people whose lives get caught up in it.
I remembered this when I read Akata Witch recently, which has a scene where the protagonist is hanging out reading some Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and I was like "hey! Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has this whole other novel that's supposed to be great that I've never read, why did I not do that?" And then I tried to find my booklogging post on Half of a Yellow Sun to remember plot points that I forgot, and couldn't find it, and had a short panic attack that maybe I had hallucinated reading it and loving it, and then it turned out I had just misspelled Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's name in tagging, because I'm a genius. This is why I do these booklogs: because if I don't externalize my memory, it all turns into mush within a year.
Anyway this seemed like a sign that it was time to read Adichie's Purple Hibiscus, and also reread Half of a Yellow Sun.
Purple Hibiscus is ALSO really good and, again, I don't really know how to talk about it adequately. It's a much quieter and less sweeping story than Half of a Yellow Sun; the narrator and protagonist is a girl named Kambili, the daughter of a Nigerian newspaper publisher who is extremely philanthropic, extremely devout, and extremely abusive. Kambili is not rebellious; she can't fathom being so. Her mother doesn't seem to be. Her older brother, Jeje, is starting to be. Her aunt, a professor with a much-loved brood of teenaged kids, thinks that all of them should be. And everything plays out with quiet, intense complexity from there.
So basically: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is fantastic, and ON A MORE SHALLOW NOTE, anyone who has already read Half of a Yellow Sun, there is a movie being released this year?! I had no idea! But Chiwetel Ejiofor has basically been my mental image of Odenigbo since I first read the book. And Nigerian novelist Biyi Bandele is writer/director, and basically I'M REALLY EXCITED (though dang is that going to be a hard movie to watch . . . or to convince anybody to go with me to see.)
I remembered this when I read Akata Witch recently, which has a scene where the protagonist is hanging out reading some Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and I was like "hey! Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has this whole other novel that's supposed to be great that I've never read, why did I not do that?" And then I tried to find my booklogging post on Half of a Yellow Sun to remember plot points that I forgot, and couldn't find it, and had a short panic attack that maybe I had hallucinated reading it and loving it, and then it turned out I had just misspelled Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's name in tagging, because I'm a genius. This is why I do these booklogs: because if I don't externalize my memory, it all turns into mush within a year.
Anyway this seemed like a sign that it was time to read Adichie's Purple Hibiscus, and also reread Half of a Yellow Sun.
Purple Hibiscus is ALSO really good and, again, I don't really know how to talk about it adequately. It's a much quieter and less sweeping story than Half of a Yellow Sun; the narrator and protagonist is a girl named Kambili, the daughter of a Nigerian newspaper publisher who is extremely philanthropic, extremely devout, and extremely abusive. Kambili is not rebellious; she can't fathom being so. Her mother doesn't seem to be. Her older brother, Jeje, is starting to be. Her aunt, a professor with a much-loved brood of teenaged kids, thinks that all of them should be. And everything plays out with quiet, intense complexity from there.
So basically: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is fantastic, and ON A MORE SHALLOW NOTE, anyone who has already read Half of a Yellow Sun, there is a movie being released this year?! I had no idea! But Chiwetel Ejiofor has basically been my mental image of Odenigbo since I first read the book. And Nigerian novelist Biyi Bandele is writer/director, and basically I'M REALLY EXCITED (though dang is that going to be a hard movie to watch . . . or to convince anybody to go with me to see.)
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