If you have read Half Of A Yellow sun, That Thing Around your Neck or Purple Hibiscus, then you will be familiar with best selling novelist Chimamanda Adiche. I'd only ever seen the picture of her on the inside of the back cover and had certainly never heard her speak before, until I came across this. TED again. I cant get enough.
Chimamanda warns about us about the danger of a single story - when we think of a country, place or group of people according to the one dimension that we have been taught and the danger of the misconceptions formed as a result. She speaks about growing up as a little girl in Nigeria and her early introduction to literature, which was comprised up of American and English literature. The characters never looked like her. They drank ginger beer and had blonde hair and blue eyes. In fact, she did not know that people who looked like she did had a place in literature at all. It all sounded very familiar.
I'm hopeless at summarising things which speak for themselves. So if you have eighteen minutes to spare, click the below.
She is charming, beautiful and very witty. I really loved Half of a Yellow Sun. So true what she says about the single story - I suppose we essentially potentially create the stereotypes we despise. Have you read Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart? It is haunting. Of all the books I read for my degree it sticks with me the most...
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