Club de Lectura Casa África con la obra 'La flor púrpura', de Chimamanda Ngozi

Casa África is holding a new meeting of its Reading Club, which has been reading The Purple Hibiscus, by the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

As always, the meeting will be chaired by Ángeles Jurado who is a journalist, writer, Africanist, inveterate reader and member of the Casa África team.

Chimamanda is one of the writers of the moment, and we had the pleasure of talking to her during her visit to Barcelona to speak at the CCCB. A feminist since before she knew what that was, she uses her pen and her life in her fight to change the misconception associated with Feminism. She wants to stop it being associated with bitter women, and she does so from the rotundity of her femininity.

In The Purple Hibiscus, Chimamanda tells the story of Kambili, a fifteen-year-old girl living in the city of Enugu in exotic Nigeria. She and her older brother Jaja lead a privileged life, for her father is a powerful and respected businessman.

They live in a beautiful house and go to an elite religious school but, as Kambili reveals with a tender voice in her story, her family life is far from harmonious. Her father is a fanatical Catholic who holds impossible expectations of his family, who he then punishes cruelly if they don’t match up to what he considers to be evangelical perfection. Only when she learns of other ways of life does Kambili becomes aware of the darkness and violence of her own.

The affectionate and daring aunt Ifeoma convinces her brother to let her niece and nephew visit her in Nsukka. Once in her aunt’s humble apartment, they discover a whole new world, governed by warmth, respect for ideas, freedom, the absence of punishment ... Governed, in short, by love. When a military coup shakes the country and Kambili and Jaja return home transformed by the freedom they have experienced, the tension in the family grows alarmingly. Jaja is no longer willing to bow his head and Kambili will have to find the strength to defend her loved ones.

The members of the Club will discuss what can be learnt from this work at a new meeting taking place on 26 October 2017 at 6:00 p.m. in the Casa África Multimedia Room.

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Anyone interested in participating in the Casa África Reading Club should send an email to cultura@casafrica.es because space is limited. Once confirmed as members of the Reading Club, participants can collect a copy of the book along with the reading guidelines.

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