Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie addresses Harvard's Class of 2018

good afternoon

harvard

class of

2018

hello thank you so much for asking me to be here today it meant a lot to me to know that you students select the class speaker of the day thank you congratulations to you and all your loved ones who are here. I spent a wonderful year at the Radcliffe Institute here at Harvard doing a fellowship in 2011 and fell in love with Cambridge and it's so good to be back. My name is Chimamanda in Ybor, which means my personal spirit will never be broken. I'm not. I'm sure why, but some people find it difficult to pronounce.

A few years ago I spoke at an event in London. The English woman who was going to introduce me had written my name phonetically on a piece of paper and backstage she held on tightly to this paper as she repeated. the pronunciation over and over again I realized that she was very eager to get it right and then she came on stage and gave a beautiful introduction and ended with the words ladies and gentlemen, please welcome chimichenga. I told. I told the story at a dinner. Shortly after and one of the guests seemed very upset because I was laughing, that was so insulting, he said that that English woman could have tried harder, but the truth is that she tried so hard, in fact, she ended up calling me a fried burrito because I tried so hard. hard and then ended up with a completely human error that was the result of anxiety, so the point of this story is not to say that you can call me chimichanga, the point is that intention matters, context matters, someone could very well call me. chimichanga out of a malicious desire to make fun of my name and which I certainly wouldn't laugh at, but there is a difference between malice and a mistake, we now live in a culture of speaking out a culture of outrage and you should call people out, you should be I'm indignant, but always remember the context and never ignore the intent.

If you asked me the title of my speech today, I would say that, above all, don't lie or don't like it too often, which actually means telling the truth, but lying the word. The idea that the law has so much political power in the United States today, but somehow feels more appropriate above all else, I'm not lying. I grew up in Nigeria during military dictatorships and nascent democracies and America always felt aspirational when something else politically absurd happened, we would say this. This can never happen in America, but today political discourse in America includes questions that come straight from the land of the absurd, such as, should we call a lie a lie? as agent as now that we must protect and value the truth before I talk to you about not lying, I must first admit that before I talk to you about not lying, I must first admit that I lied I routinely lie about my height, even at the doctor's office in Lagos when I meeting friends for lunch I lie about being stuck in traffic when in reality I'm still at home just getting dressed now there are other lies unfortunately however I can't tell you about them without having to kill you later but what I know is that I always I have felt better and done the best I could when I am afraid of the truth, when I do not lie and the biggest regrets of my life from those moments when I did not have the courage to embrace the truth, now I tell you the truth.

It doesn't mean that everything will turn out well, in reality sometimes it doesn't. I'm not asking you to tell the truth because it will always turn out well, but because you will sleep well at night and there is nothing more beautiful than waking up each day in a hug. in your hand the full measure of your integrity Many years ago, before my first novel was published, I attended a writers conference here in the US, it was a gathering of many aspiring writers and some established writers, now The latter, the established writers, was a revered ritual of the conference, so during one of the breaks I approached a man and established writer whose name I knew well but whose work I had not read, I shook his hand and told him I was a fan.

I love your job. I said his wife was sitting next to him, so which of his books have you read. She asked and I froze. Which one had you read? She asked again. Everyone at the table was silent, watching, waiting. I smiled a crazy smile and muttered. the one about the man discovering himself, which of course was complete, but I thought it might be convincing since it describes half of all the novels written by men and then I ran away, but before I ran away I heard the writer say to his wife honey, no You should have done that, but the truth is that I should not have done that, reading a novel is giving honor to art, why lie about giving honor to something that you have not done?

Of course, I was absolutely mortified by that. day, but I've come to respect what the writer's wife had a fantastic detector and now that I'm lucky enough to be an established writer who doesn't like to miss the opportunity to bask in praise for the way I can feel when a person It's saying empty words and it feels a lot worse than if they hadn't said anything, so have a good detector, if you don't have one now walk on it, but having that detector means you have to use it on yourself too and sometimes that's what more difficult.

The truths are what we had to tell ourselves when I started submitting my first writing to agents and editors and started getting rejections. I became convinced that my walk had simply not found the right home, which may have been true, but there was another truth that led me. It took me a lot longer to consider that the manuscript wasn't very good and in fact the first novel I wrote or what I thought was a novel eventually had to be put in a drawer and I'm so grateful it was never published, it's difficult. telling ourselves the truth about our failures our frailties our uncertainties it is difficult to tell ourselves that perhaps we have not done the best we can it is difficult to tell ourselves the truth about our emotions that it may be that what we feel is hurt rather than hurt Anger because maybe it's time to close the chapter on a relationship and walk away, and yet when we do, we're better off.

I understand that the mission of Harvard University requires them to be citizen leaders, I don't even know what citizen leader means that it sounds like a Harvard graduate saying I went to college in Boston, which, by the way, has to be the Most immodest form of modesty, please, class of

2018

, when you asked where you went to college, I just said Harvard, by the way. the way I went to Yale for grad school, not New Haven, which has other schools, but we also know that in the great snobbery sweepstakes of prestigious American universities, grad school doesn't really count as a bachelor's degree, which account, so it's entirely possible that I don't even know how this all works, so they're charged with being citizen leaders, which I guess means they're charged with being leaders.

I often wonder who will be led if everyone is supposed to be a leader, but you are a leader. leader or if you are the leader, I urge you to always lean towards the truth, to err on the side of truth and to help you do so, make literature your religion, that is, read fiction, poetry and non-fiction widely read narratives, make human history the center of your understanding of the world think of people as people, not as abstractions that have to conform to bloodless logic, but as fragile, imperfect people, with pride that can be wounded and hearts that can be touched.

Literature is my religion. I have learned from literature that humans have flaws, we all have flaws, but even if we have flaws we are capable of enduring goodness, we do not need to be perfect first before we can do what is right and just, and you have a class of 2018 who does not is oblivious to telling the truth when You stood alongside the lunchroom walkers during the strike, when you protested at the end of Dhaka, when you supported the Black Lives Matter movement, you were telling the truth about the dignity that every human being deserves. I applaud you, I urge you to continue, but remember. that now outside the cocoon of Harvard the consequences will be greater the risks will be greater please do not let that stop you from telling the truth sometimes especially in politicized spaces telling the truth will be an act of bravery be brave never set out to provoke for the sake of provoking but never keep silent for fear that a truth you tell might provoke be brave people can be remarkably resistant to facts they don't like but don't let that silence you from telling the truth be brave be brave It is enough to recognize that even if the position of the other party has no value, knowing what that position is does.

Listen to the other party. At least the other part reasonable. Be brave enough to recognize that democracy is always fragile and that justice. has nothing to do with the political left or the political right being brave enough to recognize those things that get in the way of telling the truth empty cleverness morally ruined irony the desire to please the deliberate fuchsin trend to confuse cynicism with sophistication be brave enough to accept that life is a disaster your life will not always perfectly match your ideology sometimes even your choices will not align with your ideology do not justify it or rationalize it recognize it because it is when trying to justify that we get into that twisting dark and endless tunnel of lies from which it is sometimes impossible to re-emerge.

Arrest. Be brave enough to say I don't know. This might be harder to do if everyone calls you Harvard, but the ignorant recognize it as an opportunity. The ignorant deny it is a closed door. It takes courage to admit the truth of what you don't know. Some people think that Harvard is the best school in the world. Personally, I'm not so sure. I need to know what my people like Yale think about that, but I do know. For many people around the world, Harvard has become much more than just a school. Harvard is a metaphor for untouchable intellectual achievements and now that you are Harvard graduates, well actually almost Harvard graduates, you don't actually have your degrees, you wouldn't get them. until tomorrow and I suppose there is still time for the people in the Harvard administration to change their minds about giving it to you, but assuming they don't change their minds and you get your degrees tomorrow and graduate from Harvard, the world will make assumptions about you.

Many of them will be beneficial to you, such as the competence and intelligence assumption, employers will pay attention to your resume when they see Harvard, but there will be other assumptions, people who know nothing about you except that you went to Harvard. They will assume that you feel superior, that you think you are everything, that they will roll their eyes when you make a normal human error. It is possible that at some point in your life you will be here in a tool that cannot be described as pleasant. There goes Harvard, now full disclosure. A friend once told me that the only thing he learned at Harvard was to behave like a person who went to Harvard, and I have often repeated that story cheerfully enough to inspire resentment and, hopefully, that will help him keep in mind the humanity of all. including the privileged, but these are some rejections that people will make about you and they are minuscule compared to the enormous privilege that comes with a degree from Harvard, you now have a certain kind of access, a certain kind of power and I know it is terribly cliché to say that.

Now you must use this power to change the world, but actually now you must use this power to change the world. Change a portion of the world, no matter how small, if you feel a sense of dissatisfaction with the status quo, encourage the dissatisfaction to be driven by your own power. act of dissatisfaction enter the system and change the system challenge the ironclad assumptions that underpin so many cultural institutions in the United States tell new stories champion new storytellers because the truth is that the universal does not belong to any group of people everyone's story is potentially universal just needs to be told, change the media in America, make it about the truth, not about entertainment, not about profit making, but about and while you do it, be smart about when you need balance and when not, because sometimes balance is sought. gets in the way of telling the truth, if you are reporting on the sunrise in the east, you don't need to listen to the other side because there is no real other side.

A degree from Harvard will give you access and opportunities, but unfortunately I have to do it. informing yourself that it will not make you invincible you still have that fragile human core at the center of all of us there will be times when you will be petrified of failing when the fear of failure stops you in those moments here is the truth it is easy to forget that you don't really know that you will fail I was lucky to receive a great gift from the universe knowing from childhood what I loved most I was lucky to have wonderful parents who supported and encouraged me and my parents are here todaywriting is What I Love if I hadn't been lucky enough to be published I would be somewhere right now, completely unknown, possibly broke, but today I would be writing that some of you here, like me, know what you love and some don't, if they don't.

I don't know what you will do if it's not something you love then something you like or something you don't hate or something you will find it but to find it you must try the wonderful Shonda Rhimes very wisely said that you have to do something until you can do something else, try it if It doesn't work, try something else. I knew from spending a year in medical school that it wasn't for me, that's actually not true. I knew this even before medical school, but going to medical school made it clearer. for me and it's not time wasted, his experience and experience will help you in ways you don't expect.

I can't tell you how many times while writing my second novel, Half a Yellow Sun, which was a deeply emotional book for me, I felt drowned by uncertainty. I would go to bed and eat chocolate, but I knew that after eating so much chocolate, after sinking into a dark place, I would get up and continue writing. I can't tell you how often I sat down to write and instead found myself browsing online to look at shoes and put on different shoes. in several online carts and then deleting some and reordering some and then not deleting them completely.

In fact, I'm thinking about starting a society of esteemed procrastinators and I suspect many of you would probably sign up. Procrastinating is a form of fear. and it's hard to know fear but the truth is you can't create anything of value without doubting and believing in yourself without doubt you become complacent without believing in yourself you can't be successful you need both and there is also the fear of measuring I want to share a line from a beautiful poem by Mary Oliver, whoever you are, no matter how lonely the world offers your imagination when you fall into the fear of competition when you compare yourself with other Harvard graduates, when you worry that you haven't achieved that work at Goldman or McKinsey or in Silicon Valley right after graduating or not win a Pulitzer at 30 or not become a managing partner of something at 35 think about literature think about early and late thinkers think about the many experimental novels that they don't follow the traditional form your story doesn't have to have a traditional arc there is an ebow scene Vanya G Cooney bhutesu Xia literally translates to when you wake up, that's your morning, what matters is that you wake up, the world is calling you, America is calling you, there is work to be done, there are tarnished things that need to shine again, there are broken things that need to be made whole again are you in a position to do this you can do it be brave tell the truth I wish you courage and I wish you the best