A Private Experience

“A Private Experience” explores class, ethnic, and religious differences in Nigeria through a specific incident: a violent riot. Drawing on real-life events, the story is written in a realistic style, which lends a tone of gravity and authenticity. This is supported by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s writing style, which limits the use of adjectives and obscure words and features carefully selected metaphors to convey the tension and horror of what Chika and the Hausa woman are experiencing.

The story is told in a combination of present-tense narration, flashbacks, and flash-forwards. The present tense creates a sense of immediacy that heightens tension, mimicking the stress of being endangered. Flashbacks add context to the political situation leading to this riot and Chika’s privileged and insulated life, which has left her ill-prepared for the challenges of everyday life, still less the riot. Flash-forwards reduce suspense but lay bare the extent of the violence, with descriptions like “Later, Chika will learn that, as she and the woman are speaking, Hausa Muslims are hacking down Igbo Christians with machetes, clubbing them with stones” (44). These moments prevent the story from taking on too optimistic or naïve a tone; while Chika and the woman have moments of solidarity, understanding, and compassion, Chika never sees her or her sister again.

Adichie makes use of typical short story strategies like a limited setting and a small cast of characters. The story is set primarily in the enclosed space of an abandoned store. The dark and dusty store creates a claustrophobic atmosphere, heightening the oppressive sense of danger. While the physical confines echo the tense nature of this polarized society, in which a perceived slight can spark a riot, it also offers a place of solace for the two women as they wait out the danger. This is deepened when the woman finds running water—a necessity—and washes herself to pray, a private moment that contributes to the theme Public Experiences Versus Private Experiences. With prayer, the room takes on the qualities of a sanctuary, and though only the woman prays, Chika is soothed by her actions. The two women are the only characters in the story, and their opposing backgrounds make the scene a microcosm of Nigerian society. Chika is wealthier and well-educated, represented in the text by her use of Standard English in contrast to the woman’s Pidgin English. While the women often find common ground, Adichie hints that this is not enough to rectify the deep rift between their people. For one thing, this space only offers a brief reprieve from the carnage outside. For another, the women never learn each other’s names—Chika simply refers to her as “the woman” throughout the story. Even though the women comfort and nurture each other, a gap remains between them. The Power of Female Connection is not enough in and of itself, and Adichie cautions against simplistic solutions to deep, complex problems. These conflicts require careful attention, though compassion and understanding are an important first step.

Along with exploring The Consequences of Religious and Ethnic Intolerance through vivid descriptions of the chaos and its aftermath—images of “burned cars, jagged holes in place of their windows and windshields” and smells of burning flesh (45)—Adichie also critiques outsider perspectives of such violence. This includes both abstracted and intellectualized ideas from within Nigeria and Western media’s interpretation of the events. Regarding the former, Chika initially feels superior to the Hausa woman because thanks to Nnedi’s political science background, she has some context for why the riot has occurred. However, this education has created a gap between her other Nigerians; while she and Nnedi demonstrated against Abacha, the dictator, Chika still feels that “she and her sister should not be affected by the riot. Riots like this were what she read about in newspapers. Riots like this were what happened to other people” (47). Even though her aunt lives in this city, where riots are more commonplace, Chika feels that she is separate from these problems and that she and Nnedi should not have to suffer. Here, Adichie calls out the dangers of cultivating too much distance from the material reality of politics. This knowledge protects neither Chika nor Nnedi—by contrast, the Hausa woman’s firsthand experience in the riots protects her and Chika. Survival is not the same as creating peace, but Adichie emphasizes that there is danger in only addressing the problems from a safe distance.

This becomes even more apparent in the flash-forwards that recount news articles and radio stories about the riots. The narrator cites both The Guardian and BBC Radio, two British publications, and undermines their inadequate reports of the event through juxtapositions. In the first instance, Chika is enraged by the BBC Radio report, thinking, “[I]t has all been packaged and sanitised and made to fit into so few words, all those bodies” (54). This sentence is immediately followed by the present-tense description of burning corpses, emphasizing the inadequacy and alienating nature of the news story. In the second example, Chika reads The Guardian’s assertion that “the reactionary Hausa-speaking Muslims in the North have a history of violence against non-Muslims” (55). This statement is juxtaposed by Chika’s memory of the Hausa woman’s exposed breast, contrasting the journalist’s generalized assumption with her lived experience of vulnerability and empathy.

These contrasts lay bare the truth of the matter, but these allusions to British news outlets underline the enduring effects of colonization. BBC’s report uses depersonalized language to describe the riots, reflecting how imperialism dehumanizes its subjects by sanitizing violence, acting as if it occurs without actual human victims. The Guardian takes a slightly different approach, using the word “reactionary” to other Hausa-speaking Muslims. This language has a different dehumanizing effect, insisting that certain types of people are more base or animalistic than others. Both examples show how division and hatred were exploited and perpetuated during British colonialism to maintain power. Like academics and theorists, these journalists view the situation from a distanced, privileged perspective, but unlike students in Lagos or other parts of Nigeria, they will never have to come face to face with the carnage. As such, the story explores how imperialist narratives are maintained even after liberation, with former empires reporting on their former colonies’ actions through lenses of alienation and bias.