General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe danger of the single story
This is in response to the "Why are so many African countries so messed up?" thread. Due to the history of colonialism, there is some dysfunction in much of the world including Africa, however it isn't like the rest of the world got off without problems, and of course there is good stuff going on in Africa as well. Anyway, it made me think of this TED talk and it's worth a look if you have the time.
http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en
And here is a link to the text from it, and an excerpt:
So, after I had spent some years in the U.S. as an African, I began to understand my roommate's response to me. If I had not grown up in Nigeria, and if all I knew about Africa were from popular images, I too would think that Africa was a place of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals, and incomprehensible people, fighting senseless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS, unable to speak for themselves and waiting to be saved by a kind, white foreigner. I would see Africans in the same way that I, as a child, had seen Fide's family.
6:34
This single story of Africa ultimately comes, I think, from Western literature. Now, here is a quote from the writing of a London merchant called John Locke, who sailed to west Africa in 1561 and kept a fascinating account of his voyage. After referring to the black Africans as "beasts who have no houses," he writes, "They are also people without heads, having their mouth and eyes in their breasts."
7:04
Now, I've laughed every time I've read this. And one must admire the imagination of John Locke. But what is important about his writing is that it represents the beginning of a tradition of telling African stories in the West: A tradition of Sub-Saharan Africa as a place of negatives, of difference, of darkness, of people who, in the words of the wonderful poet Rudyard Kipling, are "half devil, half child."
7:31
And so, I began to realize that my American roommate must have throughout her life seen and heard different versions of this single story, as had a professor, who once told me that my novel was not "authentically African." Now, I was quite willing to contend that there were a number of things wrong with the novel, that it had failed in a number of places, but I had not quite imagined that it had failed at achieving something called African authenticity. In fact, I did not know what African authenticity was. The professor told me that my characters were too much like him, an educated and middle-class man. My characters drove cars. They were not starving. Therefore they were not authentically African.
(full text at http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story/transcript?language=en )
gollygee
(22,336 posts)Downwinder
(12,869 posts)arcane1
(38,613 posts)Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)logosoco
(3,208 posts)I am a little partial these days to stories that have anything to do with Africa as my son in in Tanzania doing service with the Peace Corps. This woman speaks so well to how our family is learning much about life in Africa. Those images burned into my brain from TV commercials in the 70s. There are many people still living in hardships in the world, but there are many people doing quite well, especially considering the circumstances (both political and environmental).
This piece also made me think of my sister and myself. Our parents divorced in the 60s, when coming from a "broken home" meant we would probably end up no good. We discovered drugs, sex and rock and roll at an early age. Now that we have hit our early 50s, we laugh because we were "supposed" to turn out awful, like all of those who share similar stories. My daughter had a baby in the middle of her senior year in high school. Her oldest son is now 7. She just got promoted at her job and now makes more than her dad! She heard the stories of other young women like her and decided it was not a rule book and made her own life.
We are all from the same stuff. We have all evolved at the same pace (yes, even the republicans who seem so backward!). Our origins are in Africa, but many today would not like to acknowledge that! It is a big planet, and there is diversity, but we are all connected and we need to be open to everyone's stories. Not judgmental, but with ears and wide open eyes. And with love (even some to the republicans who seem hell bent on taking us ALL where THEY want to be).
gollygee
(22,336 posts)because the thead that made me think of this TED talk is still on the front page.