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This video features a conversation between Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Zadie Smith. One spot that caught me--that I think is relevant to your project, Kelly--is when Smith says that's quite unusual in American fiction for women to speak their mind--while in Adichie's fiction, they do. She also says that "there are no minor characters in her book." Adichie replied that she "imagined vast lives for each of her characters"--and that she was interested in questions of class: she wanted to make a point about who owns stories.

So: why don't women @ BMC speak their mind?
How to get them to?
Not to be "minor characters..."?
To "own their stories"?

There was a funny exchange about the presumptions and stereotypes of being Jamaican and being Nigerian. Adichie says that it was only when she came to the U.S. that she began to think about race, and Smith related to her stories about being a "non-American black," about the whole "construction of blackness thing." Adichie talked about all the assumptions made about being black and not able to achieve. She was expected to "play the good black," because she was not African-American. "Black" is not an identity, she said, that many non-American blacks are willing to take on. Smith said there is no strong black identity in the U.K, whereas here she has come to feel joy in being Black. Adichie asks how--given the history of this country-- "white people can not get it?" She finds race "absurd," wanting to take away all the baggage that accompanies "visualiness."

In response to questions, Adichie said that America tells itself the narrative that all immigrants should be grateful to be there--when some would prefer to go home. She doesn't think people have to be "one thing" (American or Nigerian), that Americanah is largely about the relationship between Africans and African-Americans, and that Black women's hair is a "big thing." They had a related interesting exchange about fashion magazines--Adichie thinks it's progress that Black women are appearing now in such venues, while Smith thinks that the bodies portrayed there are unhealthy, and that people looking @ such images are unhappy--so why celebrate Black bodies joining that line-up? Why not have your own aesthetic?

So: what interested you in this exchange?