In order to comprehend the way of life for others around the globe, it is important that we get past only knowing a ‘single story’ about another place or another culture. To only know a single story about a given place or culture is to be ignorant, or to be misunderstood about that specific place or culture. To put this idea more into perspective, everyone’s life is composed of a series of ‘stories’ about their country, their culture, their gender, and even their skin color. When we only understand one story about a person, place, or a culture, we become very stereotypical of them, labeling them only as what a single story defines them as. In Chimamanda Adichie’s TEDtalk, in which she addresses this problem of a single story, she calls attention …show more content…
Zitkala was a Native American, growing up with her mother and father who were Natives as well. What stood out to me immediately was the way Zitkala viewed the white man (or mercenaries) as kind with good intentions for the Natives. As the story progresses, the harsh truth unfolds as Zitkala leaves to pursue white education and prosperity in the East. What Zitkala focuses on in this story is the idea that even though she pursued an education she thought was going to be so marvelous, she ended up getting trapped in a nightmarish situation, where her idea of the white man’s “good education” was crushed and she was stripped of her culture and was pushed to fit into white culture, even when she tried to resist. Zitkala’s story was very interesting and also heartbreaking to read. Zitkala changed the way I think regarding how Natives were treated when she really begins to make aware of how she traveled to this white civilization where she thought opportunity was waiting for her, but really it was a cruel civilization of people that disrespected her Native culture and wanted to strip away her identity. I believe that a lot of Americans have a single story when it comes to Native Americans from the era of American civilization. Though many are aware Native Americans were treated poorly since the very first discovery of America by
Zitkala-Sa was extremely passionate with her native background, and she was adamant on preserving her heritage. When Zitkala was a young girl, she attended White’s Manual Labor Institute, where she was immersed in a different way of life that was completely foreign and unjust to her. And this new way of life that the white settlers imposed on their home land made it extremely difficult for Native Americans to thrive and continue with their own culture. In Zitkala’s book American Indian Stories, Legends, and Other Writings, she uses traditional and personal Native stories to help shape her activism towards equality amongst these new settlers. Zitkala’s main life goal was to liberate her people and help
In Sherman Alexie’s “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona” and “Dead Men’s Path”, the reader is given a glimpse into two different stories but share many similar characteristics of traditions. Tradition is the handing down of statements, beliefs, legends, customs, information and cultures within a group of people from generation to generation. However, these two stories will reveal that the protagonists in these stories, Michael from “Dead Men’s Path” and Victor from “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona,” will ignore their own traditions that they face throughout the story. In other words, the protagonists are westernized and have forgotten their own culture, which reflects the theory of the melting pot. The ignorance of ancestry and traditions brings the worst fates into the lives of the protagonists in each story.
In Thomas King's short story "Borders," a Blackfoot mother struggles with maintaining her cultural heritage under the pressure of two dominating nations. Storytelling is important, both for the mother and for the dominant White society. Stories are used to maintain and pass on cultural information and customs from one generation to another. Furthermore, stories can be used both positively and negatively. They can trap individuals into certain ways of thinking, but they can also act as catalysts that drive social change within society.
Eastman and Zitkala Ša reveal the truth regarding of their people’s culture and history. Their memoirs give readers an understanding of their government, religion, and customs. They show their people as respectable and hospitable beings. Furthermore, they reveal the deceptions and frauds which Native Americans have suffered. They dispel misconceptions and prejudices regarding Native Americans and demonstrate that their people are deserving of the white’s sympathy, justice, and respect.
In her speech “The Dangers of a Single Story”, Chimanda Ngozi Adichie argues that every story is one version of a single story, which conveys readers a false perception of the groups portrayed in those stories, in my opinion Adichie is correct about a universal single story. Many stories and movies that you can see or read are adaptations of another book or movie. In her speech, Adichie talks about how when she was growing up in Nigeria most of the books she read featured blonde haired and blue eyed characters, as a result of this most of the characters in she had written also had blonde hair and blue eyes. The stories that Adichie wrote directly reflected the stories that she had read as a child. After years of reading books from
In “The Truth about Stories”, Thomas King, demonstrate connection between the Native storytelling and the authentic world. He examines various themes in the stories such as; oppression, racism, identity and discrimination. He uses the creational stories and implies in to the world today and points out the racism and identity issues the Native people went through and are going through. The surroundings shape individuals’ life and a story plays vital roles. How one tells a story has huge impact on the listeners and readers. King uses sarcastic tone as he tells the current stories of Native people and his experiences. He points out to the events and incidents such as the government apologizing for the colonialism, however, words remains as they are and are not exchanged for actions. King continuously alerts the reader about taking actions towards change as people tend to be ignorant of what is going around them. At the end people give a simple reason that they were not aware of it. Thus, the author constantly reminds the readers that now they are aware of the issue so they do not have any reason to be ignorant.
What if there was only one culture that everyone came from? There would be little to no diversity because no one had any differences. Without complex cultures, the world would be much different than it is today. A person’s culture defines where they come from and who they are. Culture in the stories An Indian Father’s Plea, Two Kinds, and Everyday Use informs the way one views the world and others.
Adichie’s TED Talk opens with Adichie telling a story about her childhood and the lack of diversity that she knew due to the information that she had available to her. She believed that books could only be written one way and about certain people because that is all she had known. She says, “Because all I had read were books in which characters were foreign, I had become convinced that books by their very nature had to have foreigners in them and had to be about things with which I could not personally identify.” Adichie believed that books could only be about white Europeans who enjoyed ginger beer not Nigerian girls like herself. This risk of critical misunderstanding is the danger of a single story, by only having one view of the world we are unable to understand
We agree with the author’s ideas because his usage of personal anecdotes give us a new perspective, helping us understand the falsity of various racial stereotypes and the negative effect it has on people.
In her speech Adichie talks about how her own life experiences made her realize how the Western society to a great extent bases its view on Africa through
The purpose of the speech provided by Chimamanda Adichie is to portray the various impacts a single story can have on both an individual and a society. This is because of the usage of stereotypes provided by the media which creates an overall image, that everyone believes to be true. This is prominent when she says “A single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.” Having a single story also confines the world to generalized outlooks on cultures, religions and nationalities. Due to this, individuals must seek for diversity and different perspectives, in which everyone should be able to see the world as it is, not just the aspect that the media portrays. Through
Humans are deeply and irrevocably bound to their contexts —historical, social, geographical, political, etc. No one person’s context—or, more accurately, experience of that context—is the same. Diversity is what unifies people, what makes humanity such a deeply intricate species. Diversity is important. Each experience is lived, is valid, is full and as intricate as your life, billions of times over. I think that, when moving through the world, preoccupied with our own personal intricacies, we tend to align people with certain typification schemes, we place them into theses pre-made
Dr. Hall’s lecture, JanMohamed “The Economy of Manichean Allegory”, and Natalia Molina’s “How Race is Made in America” all aid support and better explain the three concepts given above. The lecture given by Dr. Hall was intriguing because he spoke about the two types of racism, accidental racism and intentional racism. He explained how he believes that most of the racism that exists in the world accidental racism. Accidental racism occurs when people are not well informed or culturally diverse enough. How all they truly know about other cultures is the bad that the media captures or what they see in movies. Supporting the concept of race being a fear of the unknown. JanMohamed’s reading helped me understand how race was nothing more than a social construct. The piece of literature starts by
Culture is presented as a source of conflict or pride for the characters and the effect of culture is to depict how non Western lifestyle is often neglected. The disregard for non Western culture is portrayed as negative, detrimental, and a source of identity crises for those whose culture is being neglected. Adichie manipulates culture throughout the novel in order to emphasize the importance of culture to personal identity and one’s authenticity, highlight the dangers of cultural intolerance and ignorance, and expose the misconception of the superiority of Western
In recent years, the traditional notion of Western Culture has received a great deal of scrutiny. Women, African-Americans, and other marginalized groups have argued that the cultural hegemony has been at best indifferent and at worst actively hostile to their experiences and ideas. While these charges are not without substance, they are accompanied in some instances by assertions that the members of the group in question are the “real” heroes of the culture’s history.