The award-winning novelist talks about her charitable venture into jewelry design, why free expression is important, and raising her daughter to be a reader.

We’re living in a time in which I feel a sense of urgency,” says Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the Nigerian author of Americanah and the viral 2012 TEDx Talk “We Should All Be Feminists,” a slogan that has reverberated its way into a Beyoncé song and onto tote bags and Dior t-shirts. This month, she has again merged personal aesthetics with political values in a collaboration with the fine jewelry brand Foundrae: all of the retail proceeds from her “Freedom of Expression” medallion, which employs Foundrae’s signature lexicon of dainty symbols, will benefit PEN America, a nonprofit that promotes the intersection of literature and human rights. “I used to joke, many years ago, thank God for PEN because if the Nigerian government ever throws me in prison at least somebody will care,” says Adichie. Today, she’s savoring Edith Wharton novels and spending time with her daughter to combat the constant barrage of outraging news. As she says, “our time here is short and we need to make the most of it.”

Vanity Fair: A few years ago you wrote an essay about coming to terms with your identity as a smart woman who loves fashion.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: That was my coming out from the fashion closet. The world is full of intellectual women who like fashion, who feel this pressure to pretend that they don’t. I think that’s changing. I don’t get this sense of judgment as strongly as I used to. When you’re in literary spaces you can sense a certain sniffiness. That’s reduced a bit.

Since then, you’ve had a closer relationship with fashion in general—most recently, this collaboration with Foundrae.

In general, my view is that I want to use whatever tools I can to achieve what I want to achieve. I was very happy to do this collaboration because I deeply admire PEN and PEN’s work. PEN has saved writers’ lives. PEN has made it possible for many writers to write. I’ve been a member for years. And to do something I love, something to do with fashion, that helps PEN? Are you kidding? Yes!

It seems very natural.

In some ways, I just feel that finally, I can exhale fully. And I think part of it is getting older. When I was 27, I was very much invested in performing and doing what the world wanted me to do. I’m 41. My bag of fucks to give is empty. I like fashion. I like history and politics and ideas. Those things are not mutually exclusive.

What I really want is a broad range of possibilities for women. One of my closest friends in Lagos doesn’t wear makeup, has no time for fashion, and I think she’s one of the most attractive women I know. And then I have this very close friend in Lagos who has a full face of makeup every day. She has the highest heels. And I love that. I hope that what I’m doing is contributing to that, to the breadth of range of what women can be and are.

Which is an essential feminist idea.

Feminism has had such bad stereotypes attached to it that often one has to be in a sort of perpetually defensive crouch about feminism, and even that is exhausting to me.

I think a lot of brands are seeing that consumers want them to be socially conscious. This results in a spectrum, from really practicing social responsibility to putting out products that some would call virtue signaling. Do you think that brands have a responsibility to uphold the values that they preach?

I think if they are preaching it then, yeah. If you preach feminism, for example, it would be nice if you actually had women in positions of power in your company. It would be wonderful if you thought about families having to deal with childcare. If I were in charge, I would have childcare centers in every major corporation. Staff would be just more committed, knowing that their children were in quality care while they’re at work. They’d pop downstairs or upstairs and go see the kids for five minutes. I’m not an anti-capitalist person, I just think that capitalism could be more humane.

Foundrae is based on the idea of heirlooms. I know that your mother is quite fashionable—has she passed any jewelry down to you?

A very sad thing happened when I was in secondary school. We were robbed and my mother’s jewelry was all stolen. And my mother, like many middle-class Igbo women, had a lifetime collection of jewelry, most of which was gold. And so what my siblings and I then decided to do was to slowly start to put our money together and try to buy her jewelry. She keeps telling us not to bother, but I know how much it meant to her. It’s not even the worth, it’s what it represented to her—like the first piece that she bought when she started working.

You have a daughter; do you think about what you’ll eventually pass down to her?

Mm, no. A few days ago, she went to school and came back and said, “I want a Mickey Mouse necklace.” And do you know my first reaction was, “Oh god, no—you’re just three, really?” And then I said to myself, “Why? I perform femininity, I love femininity. But then why am I not enthusiastic for her to be?” I don’t know what it is. But I certainly do not think about giving her jewelry.

What about favorite books?

Yes. We’ve already started. There’s a Winnie the Pooh book that I loved that a friend of mine who lives in London gave to me. I loved it when I was little, and so I read that to my daughter. I am also reading Peter Pan to her. She got a present of a book of fairy tales which she loves—and I don’t love. I find a lot of fairy tales ridiculous. She’s not old enough for me to read it to her in a way that we can both enjoy—that also makes fun of what needs making fun of. What is she absorbing in this whole Cinderella nonsense? But she likes it, so I read it to her. And there’s also a lovely series of books called Daddy Do My Hair?, it’s so wonderful. So we read those as well.

Does her dad do her hair?

He complains that I haven’t taught him how to. But it’s one thing I think I don’t want to teach him because everything else he does perfectly. This is my thing. He takes her swimming. He makes the best omelets.

So you can do her hair. Can you tell me about the meaning behind the Foundrae medallion?

I was thinking about what I wanted to remember of this time. We’re living in a time where I feel a sense of urgency because—and it’s not just America—I think the Western world is moving to the right. I sometimes wonder if this [is] what 1937 was like, where people in Europe felt this sense of a shift. The reason that I find it really troubling is that the idea of dehumanizing your fellow human beings has become almost acceptable and casual. The crossed arrows represent the idea of living passionately and living knowing that our time here is short and that we need to make the most of it. I feel that every morning, actually. Every time I look at the pendant I want to think about this urgency—and that one must live in a way that is meaningful.

I grew up thinking of America as a place where certain things would never happen, politically. I no longer think that because all of the things that happened in Nigeria when I was growing up, which was a military dictatorship, are happening here. You can just sense it, there really isn’t the rule of law. You get the sense that institutions are not as strong and resilient as you thought, you even get the sense that the president can just bring in anybody from his family to become part of [the] government in a way that makes no sense. That’s classic in many African countries. I’m mourning an idea of America that I used to hold very close.

Does that change the way you write fiction?

In a way, yes. It’s this constant barrage of upsetting news, and it gets in the way of art because it takes up mental space. As a fiction writer, I write about human beings, and I write about love, but all of it’s situated in a very social and political space. When all of this is coming at you—every day I hear there’s something new, some new outrage—it just takes up space. In some ways, one needs to step back as a storyteller, and it’s a struggle because I don’t know, should I stop reading the news? But then, if I stop reading the news, don’t I have a responsibility to know what’s going on? It’s constantly trying to strike that balance. And I don’t think I have struck it.

This is the most annoying question for everybody, but are you working on new fiction now?

It is indeed the most annoying question, which I will move on from.

O.K., one pass. But how do you keep yourself working?

My daughter. Hugs and kisses, every day. But also reading. I got this Kindle edition of all of Edith Wharton’s novels, and I’m reading them slowly. I’m on The Age of Innocence.

Why Edith Wharton?

I had an argument with a friend about Henry James, who I admire, but my friend was like, “Henry James is the greatest writer ever—in America and the world!” And I thought, yeah he wasn’t bad. . . . But do you realize that Edith Wharton has a lot more of the texture of character, and she gets human beings more? And he’s like, “No. Blah, blah, blah.” So I thought, you know what? I’m reading all of Edith Wharton. I’m going to write him a long essay. So that’s why. But it’s also my way [of] trying to keep in touch with my art, with what I love, which is storytelling.