Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says she is terrified her sons will ‘join manosphere’ | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie said she feared her teenage sons would “join the manosphere”.

Speaking at the Cheltenham literary festival on Saturday, the Nigerian-American author of works including Americanah told the audience that having two boys had made her “more worried” about men and boys.

“I keep reading these articles about the manosphere, and I just read a book about how men, boys, struggle, and now I’m afraid that my sons will not only struggle through their teenage years, but they’ll also somehow join the manosphere and start talking about how women should be in the kitchen,” she said.

“But in reality, that’s not going to happen. I’m not going to react well to this nonsense,” he added, drawing laughter from the audience.

Adichie and her husband Ivara Esege have three children: a 10-year-old daughter and one-and-a-half-year-old twin boys.

The boys “will grow up in a very different world than the one my husband and I grew up in,” she said. “I think they’re lucky to have a good father. But sometimes I wonder: Do we have what it takes to get them to do it right? I want them to do it right, too.”

According to Adichie, feminism is “dreaming about how the world could be better.” “Part of that dream for me – now as a mother of a boy – involved me becoming more attracted to men.” “We need to talk more about boys and men. This is important. Because men,” she added. like that don’t struggle”.

Adichie attended the festival to receive the Sunday Times literary excellence award and was presented with the first edition of Chinua Achebe’s novel God’s Arrow, which he described as his “greatest novel”. He later discussed his latest novel, Dream Count, with Times literary critic Johanna Thomas-Corr.

While Adichie has spoken extensively about feminism, she did not address the backlash she has faced in recent years for her views on trans women. The criticism began after an interview she gave on Channel 4 in 2017: “People were asking, ‘Are trans women women?’ “When you say, my feeling is that trans women are trans women.” He did not answer questions on the subject in an interview with the Guardian in February this year, but approached the subject at a later point in the interview: “What do I want to say about cancel culture? Cancel culture is bad. We have to stop it. End of story.”

Asked in Cheltenham what women should do about issues such as the rollback of reproductive rights in the US, Adichie said: “Women have really done everything they need to do. I want to talk about what men should do.”

“Women in general listen to women and men, and men listen to men. So I think we need to hire good men who will go out there and talk to other men.”