Award-winning Nigerian author and novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has pleaded with young people all across the world to spend more time reading if they want to succeed in life.
According to Anaedoonline.ng, Adichie stated this during her speech at The Harvard Centre Honors, Massachusetts, US, where she was awarded the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal on Thursday.
The 45-year-old novelist claimed she left Nigeria rather than pursue a medical degree as her parents had desired, claiming “I was made to make stories.”
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She then urged young people to adopt a reading culture after providing some insight into how her family in the US, who were responsible for her great literary career, received her.
She said, “The most meaningful thing for me as a writer is to know that I can create something that means something to other people. And so what moves me the most is to hear from people who have read me and who say, your work made me feel seen, your work made me think differently, your work made me feel that I was not alone.
“And I’m so grateful for this award because again it just makes me feel that what I’m doing matters and it’s a gift to feel what you’re doing matters.
“For the young people who are here, if you care about anything, please care about reading, reading is so important, reading is magical, books are magical.
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“And I really think that one of the best ways to counter what seems to me to be a really ugly tsunami of book bannings going around in this country is to read. The only way that we can answer to censorship of books is to read books.”
Speaking about embracing books at the expense of social media, Adichie said, “And so for you young people, I just want to make a very small suggestion, how about you give up social media for you know, two weeks, three weeks, a month, and read, read, read.”
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