She is a writer

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born September 15, 1977 in Enugu, Nigeria. She was raised in Nsukka near the University of Nigeria. Her father, James Nwoye Adichie, was a professor of statistics and later became the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University. Her mother, Ifeoma Adichie, became the first female registrar at the University.  Chimamanda is of Igbo descent that belong to an ancestral home.She was an A student that  received several academic awards.  When she was 19, she left Nigeria on a scholarship to Drexel University in Philadelphia to study communication and earned a degree there. Later that year, she began MFA courses in literature at Johns Hopkins University where she got credits with her literary success.  After reading Chinua Achebe, masterwork Things Fall Apart at the age of 10 , she realized that people who looked like her could exist in books. Her desire to write was sparked by his work. In 2003, Purple Hibiscus was published to wide acclaim, and together with her second novel Half of a Yellow Sun about the Biafran War, she was awarded with many prizes. Adichie tries to combat the image of Africans as portrayed by Western media. Choosing to write first from her experience as an affluent and educated Nigerian, she was often criticized for shying away from the “real” Africa. But she struggled to write characters who were not starving, bullied or with AIDS. She is a staunch feminist and uses her work as a way to work through the misogyny and condescension she has faced as an African woman in the global literary community. She married to a Maryland-based doctor, and splits her time between the United States and Nigeria.

The Danger of a Single Story

In the first presentation, the author talks about the danger of telling a single story as a writer as well as to keep only to what we are told as readers. Specially with children that happen to be very impressionable and vulnerable when they are told a story. As a child, when the writer read only foreign books, about things she did not know, she believed those were the only stories. However, a  mental shift in her perception appeared when she discovered African literature with topics she recognized. It was the beginning of a new world that saved her from knowing a single story.  Single stories have the power to be greater than others, depending on what is told, on who tells the story and on how many times is told. In fact, one character from a book is not representative of all the inhabitant of a certain place. Personal impressions from authors show only one part of the story, and sometimes it is a negative image. Single stories create stereotypes by showing  incomplete versions that sometimes are not true and make that story an only version. The author advises on engaging in all aspects of one character and emphasize on the similarities rather than the differences with the reader. In order to balance a story,it is essential to see both sides and get a complete picture. The importance of books is that they could empower, regain or breake human dignity. As readers, she advises on  rejecting single stories, because there is never one, and to enrich ourselves by pursuing and knowing the complete version.

In the second lecture, the author exposes that books have the wonderful ability to enlarge imagination. The audience as readers are responsible from moving the writing from a private to a public space. She also talks about her preference for the realistic literature where real human beings live in real places. Although the world of real literature is not the real world, it is the most humanized one because it infuses meaning. She speaks of the danger of turning facts into truth and the importance of books as vehicles to achieve the  truth in searching for humanity. The world emphasizes on facts and numbers while human desires are shelved. A pursue of a coexistance of these factors with human stories is needed, to get to know how other people live,  to embrace empathy by getting to know others so as to realize how people share a common and equal humanity. Literature focus on the difference among people, so as to truly see them, and find how similar they are in the eyes of their differences. And the thrill lies on the magnificent difference of the world that  is share in the quest for values. Every human being is to be valued and their hearts to be nourished. Books have the power to transcend the writer and the importance of its content includes the possibility of a secret knowledge. While emotions such as love and dignity matter and lead us to act, facts convince. Nigeria, as a British colony, was imposed a foreign language and culture through books. Ideas are put through words, not only for entertainment but also for the population to learn english manners. As a result, to write realistic literature is to create citizenship. And the value of a person is precisely given by citizenship. Although, the weight of assumptions and negative connotations is very strong, the importance of real literature is the transmission of a sense of sensibility. Clearly, visions of Africa by westerns  writers are not accurate and show the significance of colonial influence that resulted in the loss of language, identities, dignity and its inheritance to successive  generations.

Sources:

Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story.(n,d). Retrieved from 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=D9Ihs241zeg

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Commonwealth Lecture 2012.(2012). Retrieved from 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vmsYJDP8g2U
Biography of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977-). (1999). Retrieved from http://www.gradesaver.com/author/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie/