By Folayemi Oladimeji
Renowned novelist Chimamanda Adichie will on October 6 receive Harvard University’s W.E.B. Du Bois Medal.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian writer whose works include novels, short stories and nonfiction.
She was described in The Times Literary Supplement as “the most prominent” of a “procession of critically acclaimed young anglophone authors succeeding in attracting a new generation of readers to African literature”, particularly in her second home, the United States.
For Adichie, it marks another return to Harvard. She was the Harvard College Class Day Speaker in 2018 and a Harvard Radcliffe Institute Fellow (2011-2012).
The W. E. B. Du Bois Medal is Harvard’s highest honour in African and African American studies.It is awarded to individuals in the United States and across the globe in recognition of their contributions to African and African American culture and the life of the mind.
Recipients have included scholars, artists, writers, journalists, philanthropists, and public servants whose work has bolstered the field of African and African American studies.
Past recipients include the late celebrated Nigerian author Chinua Achebe (2008), Muhammad Ali (2015), Maya Angelou (posthumously in 2014), Oprah Winfrey 2014), Steven Spielberg (2013) and LL Cool J (2017).
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Chimamanda and six others will receive the medal on the aforementioned date.
The Hutchins Center for African and African American Research announced in The Harvard Gazette that other honourees include basketball legend, cultural critic, activist Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and ground-breaking actress Laverne Cox.
University Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., director of the Hutchins Center, in an official statement, said this year’s honourees represent an “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.”
Chimamanda has received global recognition for her work, translated into over thirty languages and won numerous awards and prizes.
