Celebrated Nigerian author and feminism advocate Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, is set to receive a prestigious award from Havard University.
The award-winning author, who continues to put Nigeria on a global map, will receive W.E.B Du Bois Medal from Harvard University on October 6, 2022.
The medal is the most prestigious award presented by Harvard to people in the field of African and African studies.
Few past honorees of this award include, Oprah Winfrey, Maya Angelou, Muhammad Ali, Steven Spielberg, Ava Duvernay and Chinua Achebe.
Other recipients of the award apart from Adichie are Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Laverne Cox, Agnes Gund, Raymond J. McGuire, Deval Patrick, and Betye Saar.
The director of Hutchins Centre, University, Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., said those selected showed “unyielding commitment to pushing the boundaries of representation and creating opportunities for advancement and participation for people who have been too often shut out from the great promise of our times”.
Years back, Chimamanda Adichie had revealed her biggest inspiration.
The mother of one had rained praises on Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka.
The literary experts were pictured together in a photo shared by Adichie on her Instagram page. In her caption, Adichie expressed awe for and gratitude to Soyinka describing him as a “guiding light”.
Read her full caption:
“You are, for me, a guiding light:
Your courage. The ease with which you inhabit your skin, speaking your mind, unburdened by apology.
Your kindness and humour.
Your utter coolness.
The urgent, terse poetry of The Man Died, the exuberance of Ake; your faith in possibility, in adventure, in progress.
Yes indeed, ‘the mindless ones are neither the total sum nor the true face of humanity.’
Thank you, Prof.
CNA
