Once again warm welcome in my Blog. Now,I am coming with very interesting author belongs to Nigeria, Africa named Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie very radical thinker. Task assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad sir as the part of Sunday Reading.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, (born September 15, 1977, Enugu, Nigeria), Nigerian author whose work drew extensively on the Biafran war in Nigeria during the late 1960s.
Adichie is Novelist short-story writer and Non-fiction writer. Her way to highlight the contemporary social issues in a very creative and interesting way is unique.
1.Did the first talk help you in understanding of Post colonialism?
The first talk is about the danger of a single story. Adichie explains that if we only hear about a people, place or situation from one point of view, we risk accepting one experience as the whole truth.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's "The Danger of a Single Story" Ted Talk, in July 2009, explores the negative influences that a “single story” can have and identifies the root of these stories. Adichie argues that single stories often originate from simple misunderstandings or one’s lack of knowledge of others, but that these stories can also have a malicious intent to suppress other groups of people due to prejudice (Adichie). People, especially in their childhood, are “impressionable and vulnerable” when it comes to single stories (Adichie 01:43). Adichie asserts that media and literature available to the public often only tell one story, which causes people to generalize and make assumptions about groups of people
Adichie shares two primary examples to discuss why generalizations are made. Reflecting on her everyday life, she recalls a time where her college roommate had a “default position” of “well-meaning pity” towards her due to the misconception that everyone from Africa comes from a poor, struggling background (04:49). Adichie also clearly faults herself for also being influenced by the “single story” epidemic, showing that she made the same mistake as many others. Due to the strong media coverage on Mexican immigration she “had bought into the single story”, automatically associating all Mexicans with immigration (Adichie 08:53). These anecdotes emphasize how stereotypes are formed due to incomplete information, but one story should not define a group of people.
Adichie also tackles the effect of political and cultural power on stories. Power not only spreads a story, but also makes its ideas persist. Adichie states that power can be used for malintent, through controlling “how [stories] are told, who tells them, when they're told, [and] how many stories are told” (09:25). Using power to manipulate our understanding of others can be evidenced by Adichie’s trip to Mexico, where she realized Mexicans were not the harmful Americans Western media had portrayed them to be. Additionally, influential western stories have caused people like Adichie to have a limited idea of characters that appear in literature, since foreigners were not part of them. This is why the first stories Adichie had written included white characters playing in the snow rather than things reflective of her life in Africa (Adichie 00:39). Adichie explains how she became enlightened through “the discovery of African writers”, which “saved [her] from having a single story of what books are” and becoming another victim of a biased sample of literature (02:36).
Adichie puts her speech in a nutshell stating that “to create a single story, show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become” (09:25). Her conclusion responds to these misconceptions by reiterating the importance of spreading diverse stories in opposition to focusing on just one. She professes that the rejection of the single story phenomenon allows one to “regain a kind of paradise” and see people as more than just one incomplete idea (Adichie 18:17).
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. “The Danger of a Single Story.” TEDGlobal, TED, 23 July
2009, Oxford, UK. Speech.
2.Are the argument in second talk convincing?
Adichie's TED Talk argues that "feminist" isn't a bad word and that everyone should be feminist. She begins with a brief anecdote about her friend Okoloma, with whom she grew up. Okoloma was a great thinker and enjoyed debating Adichie about anything and everything. One day, during a heated debate, he called Adichie a "feminist." She didn't know what the word meant at the time, but understood that it wasn't a compliment. In fact, Okoloma was criticizing her. She never forgot this incident.
Adichie recalls a male friend in her home country of Nigeria calling her a "feminist," clearly meaning it as an insult.
Adichie then focuses on the wage gap and the gendered nature of economic power. In Nigeria, for instance, it's assumed that any woman with money has gotten that money from a man.
Adichie concludes by saying that people do a great disservice to both men and women by teaching them to adhere to strict gender roles.
3.What did you like about the third talk?
" Be courageous enough to accept your life as messy, your life is not always perfectly matching to your ideology."
To do something unforgettable or valuable there is need of Self Doubt and Self Belief. Without Self doubt you become complacent and without self belief you cannot succeed. There is a very nice reference poem by Mary Oliver is also given which…
Whoever you are
No matter how lonely
The world offers itself to your imagination.
So, to be true to self and faithful to self is more important in the world of post-truth era.
"Whenever you wake-up
That is your morning, what matters is you wake up.
So, It is very interesting to know about Chimamanda African author with voice of Marginalized people. Presenting very new and fresh thought about feminism and importance of truth in post-truth era.
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