Eggers, Adichie Call Attention to Africa @ 92Y

Monday morning, I’d mentioned the upcoming appearance by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Dave Eggers as one of this season’s 92nd St. Y highlights. Amanda ReCupido was there to cover the event, where moderator Norman Rush, who described both Adichie’s and Eggers’s ability to demonstrate the chronic violence in Africa as “significant works of art.” When Adichie read from her novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, she explained to the audience that it become a central part of the history in her native Nigeria (where she still has a home today). “My book got people talking and asking each other about their experiences,” Adichie said. “Even in school, we knew that there was a war going on, but that was about it.”

Eggers read from What is the What, which is based on the life of Sudanese civil war refugee Valentino Achak Deng.

“Eggers has taken his mission to heart,” Amanda writes, “allocating all proceeds from the book to Sudanese funds such as the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, an organization that works to improve the lives and defend the rights of women, children and young people around the world, as well as the recently launched Valentino Achak Deng Foundation, whose mission is to improve access to educational opportunities. Specifically, the foundation aims to construct secondary schools and train the teachers to staff them, create adult vocational training opportunities, and provide university scholarships. ‘When I first started, I thought I would be writing a book about the past,’ Eggers said. ‘I couldn’t comprehend that anyone would let something like this happen again.’”

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