Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Receives 2019 Everett Rogers Award

Mutiat Alli, Lagos

Los Angeles, California, February 7, 2019 – Internationally-acclaimed author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, has been awarded the 2019 USC Annenberg Everett Rogers Award. Adichie was honored for her influence in reframing the global conversations on race, gender and identity. The Dean of the school, Willow Bay, said that Adichie was the unanimous choice as this year’s recipient because of “her singular voice and power to inspire”.
The author of the critically-acclaimed novels, Half of a Yellow Sun and Americanah, has said “Your feminist premise should be: I matter. I matter equally. Not “if only.” Not “as long as.” I matter equally. Full stop.”
The award has been presented since 2005 in honor of achievements in the fields pioneered by scholar and teacher Everett Rogers, a former Associate Dean of the USC Annenberg School.
Previous award honorees include Kathleen Hall Jamieson (2018), professor of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania and Sherry Turkle (2017), professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Adichie was introduced by Award-winning actress and playwright, Danai Gurira. Gurira who hailed Adichie as “my author” is best known for her roles as Michonne from the show The Walking Dead and Okoye from the film, Black Panther. Her presentation gave honor to Adichie’s work and credited it for being able to make black women feel seen, heard and understood.
Director of the school’s Norman Lear Center and Professor of Entertainment, Media and Society, Marty Kaplan, presented the award to Adichie for “her gifts, as a storyteller, to inspire and empower and for summoning us (in her words) to ‘counter lies with facts repeatedly and unflaggingly while also proclaiming the greater truths of our equal humanity of decency, and of compassion’”