Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie recalls being groped at age 17 by man who she thought wanted to help her

Feminist icon Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie shared her #MeToo moment in a recent interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, recalling how she was groped at the age of 17 in Lagos, Nigeria, after meeting with a man who offered to help her with her first book of poetry.

“I went to this man’s office. He was very nice, very helpful. I was sitting across his desk and he said he was so impressed because young people were not reading and I had written this book at 17. 

And then he got up and came around and very casually slipped his hand inside under my shirt, under my bra, and squeezed my breast,” Adichie told Amanpour. “Nothing had prepared me for it. Nothing in his behavior had suggested he was going to do anything like that.”

Asked whether the experience had helped shaped her views on feminism, Adichie explained that she had actually begun developing her feminist ideology long before then.

“As a child I was very much aware that the world did not treat women and men the same way,” she said. “I became a feminist because I grew up in Nigeria and observed the world. I saw what felt to me like an injustice that made no sense. Why were women judged more harshly? Why were all the positions of real power occupied by men? Why were the cultural practices that had prestige only for men? It didn’t seem to make any sense.”

As to why she had decided to speak out now, Adichie said that she wanted to continue the dialogue started by the #MeToo movement, and help people in general to better understand and empathize with the experiences of women.

“It happens to most women,” said Adichie of facing harassment. “It’s not unusual. I wanted to talk about why we don’t talk about it. The social conditioning that women go through that makes them reluctant to talk about these experiences. Somebody will say, ‘Why are you talking about it now? Why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you push him or slap him?’ Our socialization teaches us to be nice and kind even to people who hurt us.”

Adichie, whose famous book We Should All Be Feminists has resonated across the world and inspired public figures as diverse as Daily Show host Trevor Noah and Dior creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri, appeared at the 2017 Women in the World Summit where she spoke about the importance of women learning to overcome social conditioning and to reject the “terrible dangerous cultural mindset that says to women: you need to be liked.”

Watch Adichie’s full interview with Amanpour below.