The Danger of a Single Story

Hello Readers!

This blog is a response to the Sunday reading and task given by Prof. Dilip Barad.

As a part of this reading we had to watch two Ted talks and a lecture at the Harvard university uploaded on YouTube and delivered by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Shall write a blog reflecting the outcome of my understanding.

Introduction:

Chimamanda had grown up on a University Campus in eastern Nigeria as her father was a Professor and her mother was an Administrator.

Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003), won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), won the Orange Prize. Her 2013 novel Americanah won the US National Book Critics Circle Award and was named one of The New York Times Top Ten Best Books of 2013.
 

1) Talk on importance of Story / Literature

At the age of four she started reading British and American children books, When she started writing, her characters were having blue eyes, talking about weather, eating apple, played in snow while in Nigeria, people did not have any need to talk about weather. or they were eating mangoes rather. Particularly as a child she had this imagination which she said saved her from having a single story of what books are. In the video she is saying "I went through a mental shift in my perception of literature, I realized that people like me, girls with kinky hair could not form a ponytails, could also exist in literature", which is reminding me of the fairy tales I have heard from my Maternal Grandmother where there were Princess and Price, Gods and Goddesses, and Fairies  only in existence which in those days were making me to expect myself to convert in a Goddess or a Princess( In short I wanted to change myself thinking the existence I was having was not important enough) by Growing up and reading literature I realized that literature has been also written for  Children and for Human and Animals or I understood that there are the People who needs the Literature to be written about them. 

London merchant John Lok represented the beginning of a tradition of telling African stories in the west in 1561 by saying "beasts who have no houses they are people without heads, having their mouths and eyes in their breasts".

Rudyard Kipling said them "Half devil, half child".

When Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie  is taking about the role of power she said that Power is responsible to Show people as one thing, as only one thing over and over again and that is what they become.

Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti have said that if you want to dispossess people, a simplest way to do it is to tell their story and to start with, "Secondly".

All the stereotypes are not untrue but Incomplete, as far as they are told with the single side of the story or the narrative. By coming closer to literature one realizes how it is important to tell their stories and the reality of each story they have heard.

Here is the video if you are looking for deep insight.

2.We should all be Feminists.

Here in this video is about being a Feminist where we will find many people saying we do not need Feminism now in our society though we must understand and observe the condition of Women or what is it to be a female. 

"Influence of the western books" on someone  is a common sentence used by people to prove the changed behavior of a student or any educator who tries to implement Feminism or independence in their behavior. 

Wangari Maathai, Novel peace laureate said- " The higher you go, the fewer women there are" is referred in a Video by Chimamanda that as there is Women empowerment in countries, we can find females doing jobs and other things but when it comes to power and higher posts there is male dominance is higher like still in India there are only A few number of female Vice chancellors in Universities and even in Business  and Politics Female leaders are of Handful only.

•  Chimamanda talks that Women can have ambition, but not too much, you should aim to be successful but not too successful that society needs them in a role of an angel who works and nurtures without getting tired. 

 Kiran Bedi is a former tennis player who became the first woman in India to join the officer ranks of the Indian Police Service (IPS) in 1972, also said about 

Here is the News Article(click here to read)

Little things that string the most, waiter greeting man only in the restaurant, can't let woman accompanied without man, enter; Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie had written all these experiences in her article named "What it is to be a young and female in Lagos", we have seen many women earlier entering in public places applying sindoor even they are unmarried so that the another who looks at them gets to know that they are protected ny someone or there is someone having the right over them and to our surprise, It was working well! 

How we raise our children?

We teach boys to be afraid of weakness, of Vulnerability and girls to make themselves smaller and shrink. We see female being happy or saying thanks to Husband if he Changes Diaper of a baby and for many household works as if it belongs to a female only(In the matter of work and responsibility, when it comes to have custody of a child male will come to prove their right over a child), when children grow up seeing all these practices:  Pressure of proving muscularity is highly we have stressed upon boys and we say to girls, they will absorb it too deeply that they will never question them.

Here are several things which are making male and female both Stressful about:

• Emasculating man(We will torture man if he is weak) 
• Wearing ring without being engaged
• Ultimate Purpose of the life of a female is to get married( so that they make Terrible choice in the pressure of marriage and ending their lives or getting blamed for being uncultured). 
• "I did it for peace in my marriage", ( This sentence has the different meanings for male and female, when male says this we will look at him with the sense of a respect, when female says this, She is usually talking about having giving up a job, a dream, a carrier; which will also get appreciated but the big loss is on her side).
• We respect women for her virginity,
• We teach them: shame and silence.

Weight of gender expectations is given much more weight here in the video where Man and Woman both have load of their responsibility as a particular gender, which is in fact planted by the society.

What does it mean to be a Feminists?

At its core, feminism is the belief that women deserve equal social, economic, and political rights and freedoms

 Chimamanda is callindg herself a Happy African Feminist Who Does Not Hate Men. At some point I was a Happy African Feminist Who Does Not Hate Men And Who Likes To Wear Lip Gloss And High Heels For Herself And Not For Men.", as she is pointing out that generally it gets interpreted that if women is having good makeover is to only woo men and if they are caling themselves Feminists, they are almost hating men which is in fact not so.

• Chimamanda has also written a book 'We should all be Feminists'

3.Talk on importance of Truth in Post-Truth Era.

Harvard class 2018 where Chimamanda delivers her speech, she starts about speech with Difference between malice and mistake, the pronunciation of her name that if someone speaks it wrong though trying hard and someone gets it wrong intentionally there is a huge difference between them. Context matters a lot in the Post colonial studies and Everywhere in the twenty-first century world.

Above all else, do not lie or don't lie too often is the matter starting initially with one's self and then with the other.

Political lie and a lie used by common man on a daily basis is what Chimamanda discussed in her talk that a lie spoken by a common person for almost innocent or good reason and by a politician who speaks lie often to win in the election as it gets proved wrong when the implementation is not done are different as the disaster emerging out of them are different.   

" We should call a lie a lie, when is a lie a lie", when it comes about speaking; everyone who smells a lie they should spoke it out no matter to themselves or to any other person in Power.

•  Chimamanda strongly suggests everyone to Bent on the truth

"I don't know" is really easy term to know but harder to accept as someone has to accept openly sometimes that they really do not know something.

"It's hard to tell ourselves the truth, our failures, fragilities, uncertainties. It's hard to tell that we haven't done our best, which we could have.”

Universal story is very humanly, it needs to be told well!" is the discussion in her Ted Talk that if  one observes stories from the lives of another it sounds similar to the story they are having.

Read on the Official website of Chimamanda(Click here to read)

Thank You.