SR: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

         Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

1. Did the first talk help you in understanding of postcolonialism?                             

                               By understanding the nature of the question we should know about the postcolonialism. It is the historical period or state of affairs representing the aftermath of Westerncolonialism; the term can also be used to describe the concurrent project to reclaim and rethink the history and agency of people subordinated under various forms of imperialism.

                                      Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice  and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.

                                 

                             Adichie grew up in Nigeria. In her presentation, she describes herself as a long-time storyteller and early reader. The children's books that were available to her then were British and American. They had characters who had blonde hair and blue eyes. They talked about the weather and drank ginger beer. When Adichie started writing, her characters and plots matched those in these stories, even though her own everyday life didn't resemble this. She says that while these stories 'stirred her imagination,' they also gave her a 'single story of what books are.' When she discovered African stories through authors like Chinua Achebe, the 'father of African literature,' she realized that books can be about the places and characters that she recognized - those with the 'skin color of chocolate' and 'kinky hair.'

                                 Adichie left Nigeria at the age of 19 to go to college in the United States. When she arrived, she discovered that her American roommate had already formed ideas about Adichie based on a 'single story.' The roommate was surprised to find that Adichie knew how to speak English and how to use a stove because she came from Africa. As Adichie explains, her roommate's 'single story' of Africa was one of catastrophe rather than diversity.

                                  Adichie uses this experience to address how the single story of Africa came to be, pointing to Western literature, which is prose and poetry written by authors from North America and Europe. The image of Africa in Western literature is one of beautiful landscapes, exotic animals, and people who fight senseless wars, live in poverty, and die from AIDS. In these stories, Africans do not have voices of their own and are waiting to be saved by 'kind, white foreigners.' This single story of Africa has been told so often that not only did Adichie's roommate believe it, but so did one of her college professors. When Adichie presented a story to him that she had set in Lagos, her professor told her that the characters were not 'authentically African' because they were educated and drove cars. He couldn't conceive of Africans who weren't starving and didn't need to be saved.

                                  Adichie argues that when there's only a single story about a group of people, it robs them of their dignity. The single story reduces people, rendering them incomplete, flat, one-dimensional. As a result, it becomes difficult to recognize equal humanity in the characters of a single story. 

2. Did the arguments in the talks are convincing ?

We Should All Be Feminists is a book-length essay by the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. First published in 2014 by Fourth Estate, it talks about the definition of feminism for the 21st century. 

                                   Yes,it convincing because it shows the So long  inequality and male supremacy persist, women and girls need feminism. Men and boys need it too because equality is better for everyone. Even though we're well into the 21st century, women are still under-represented in leadership positions and men are under-represented in caring roles.It also gives some postivive effects like Gender equitable societies which are healthier for everyone. As feminism challenges restrictive gender norms, improvements in women's access to health care, reproductive rights, and protection from violence have positive effects on everyone's life expectancy and well-being, especially children.

                           Adichie argues that when there's only a single story about a group of people, it robs them of their dignity. The single story reduces people, rendering them incomplete, flat, one-dimensional. As a result, it becomes difficult to recognize equal humanity in the characters of a single story.

3. What did you like about the third talk? 

                               Post-truth is a philosophical and political concept for "the disappearance of shared objective standards for truth" and the "circuitous slippage between facts or alternative facts, knowledge, opinion, belief, and truth". Post-truth discourse is often contrasted with the forms taken by scientific methods and inquiry.                      

                                    The wonderfully restrained sense of deep disappointment underlying Chimamanda's narrative reminded me of how similar the histories of many African countries are, how passionately people believed in ideas that would disappoint them, in people that would betray them, in futures that would elude them. 

4. Are these talks bringing any significant change in your way of looking literature and life?

“Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize.” –              Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie                                      

                                 One way that children can learn about groups of people is through the pages of children’s books. Just as real people have multiple stories, so too should children’s book characters. If we reduce characters to stereotypes or reduce them to traditional foods, festivals, folklore, fashion, or famous people (the five Fs), we run the risk of telling a single story: the exotic, the other.                                

                          OVERARCHING concepts which relates to our lives. Although every book is special in its own unique way, each of Adichie's novels circulate around two common themes: the concept that love isuniversal and humane there must be flaws , and that every perspective isdifferent therefore every perspective deserves a listen .Instead of sticking to just one or two perspectives, Adichie goes above and beyond by using  distinct characters' perspectives while keeping to a third person omnipotent narrator. In addition, certain plot devices are revealed in the very end, building lots of tension throughout the novel.