Readers Are Writers and Writers are Readers

I hear that all them time. I say it to my students when I want to sound sophisticated and deep. But you know what? It is true. I just finished the most amazing first novel by writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie called Purple Hibiscus. The story is told by 14 year old Kimbali who is raised in a strict and abusive Catholic home by her tyrannical father. Kimbali lives in Nigeria and struggles to live a life where the old ways of life have been disregarded for the new order . She struggles with the religious and the pagan. It isn't until she goes for a visit to her aunty's house that she realizes that there is another way to live.

Kimbali struggles to find a the balance between the old and the new. She struggles to find the balance between the love she has for her father and the hatred and confusion she feels for the life of physical and emotional abuse she suffers at his hands.

I guess I found Kimbali's story so engrossing because so much of her story is my story. Yeah, I know she is Nigerian and I'm Jamerican, but you know what I mean. I too can identify with growing up "stuck" between two worlds. I can identify with being confused by the contradictions of the "pentecostal holy rollers" life and the life I had at home once the preacher said amen. I know what it is like growing up being told that everthing good I did was because I was a "Jamaican child growing up in America" and at the same time being spanked for all the bad things because I forgot that I was a "Jamaican child growing up in America". In so many ways my mom and dad were Kimbali's father.

It was refreshing to read the novel because ALL of the characters have skin like mine. They use words that I too use in my daily life. I know the foods that they eat (man I could eat some Jalaf Rice right now). It is nice to read a story about people like me: characters that are educated and smart. Characters that make points that are poignant. It is nice to see characters with my skin color struggle with the same issues that I do. It is nice to see characters that speak with eloquence and grace. It is refreshing that Adechie found it OK to tell her people's (and in a way, my people's) story. I hope that someone will be proud of me like I am proud of her when I tell my story.

I'm going to Google her. I hope she has written something else.