Award-winning Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie will receive Harvard University’s W.E.B. Du Bois Medal on October 6th, 2022. This marks another return to Harvard for Chimamanda, who was the Harvard College Class Day Speaker in 2018, and was previously a Harvard Radcliffe Institute Fellow (2011-2012). The Hutchins Center for African and African American Research announced in The Harvard Gazette that Chimamanda, alongside six other honourees, will receive the medal as people “who embody the values of commitment and resolve that are fundamental to the Black experience in America”. Other honourees include basketball legend, cultural critic, and activist Kareem Abdul-Jabbar; and ground-breaking actress Laverne Cox.
“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.” Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Chimamanda has received global recognition for her work, which has been translated into over thirty languages and won numerous awards and prizes. She occupies a unique position combining a number of attributes. The New York Times T Magazine in its 2017 ‘Greats’ issue, described her as ‘one of those rarest of people: a celebrated novelist who has also become a leading public intellectual’. Chimamanda is also a fashion and beauty icon and continuously promotes Nigerian designers, including through her ‘Wear Nigerian’ initiative. She was selected as the face of beauty brand Boots No7, and has been featured in numerous style publications including Vanity Fair’s ‘International Best-Dressed List’; and on the covers of British Vogue and Marie Claire Brazil amongst others.
Barack Obama called her “one of the world’s great contemporary writers”; and Hillary Clinton has written that “she has the rare ability to sum up even the biggest societal problems swiftly and incisively”.
