Celebrated Nigerian novelist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has had a baby. There was no press statement, no Instagram announcement, not even a tweet. Instead, the news came via an interview with the Financial Times’ “Lunch with the FT” series (paywall), during which the author orders a syrupy sweet mocktail because she is breastfeeding.
It takes journalist David Pilling a second or two to realize that he’s been handed a scoop. Adichie admits that perhaps she has some friends who don’t even know she has become a mother. The 38-year-old has become one of the most prominent voices on feminism today, and her journey into parenthood is likely to become a topic of debate, just as it didfor prize-winning authors Zadie Smithand Jane Smiley (but hardly ever for male authors). But it’s her business, and Adichie reminds us of that.
“I just feel like we live in an age when women are supposed to perform pregnancy,” Adichie tells Pilling. “We don’t expect fathers to perform fatherhood. I went into hiding. I wanted it to be as personal as possible.”
“Can I ask the baby’s name?” ventures Pilling. “‘No, I won’t say,’ she says with a disarming smile,” he describers her response. And with that there is no more baby talk.
Adichie is known to fiercely protect her privacy, shielding her husband and now her daughter from public view. Still, she did not hide her baby bump and has written about living with depression.
Adichie is a wife, a self-confessed daddy’s girl and now mother to a baby girl.
Congratulations to her!
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