What are the implications of growing up reading about characters who are nothing like you?
Lola sent this to me yesterday. It’s a great talk by Nigerian writer Chimamanda Adichie. She speaks about how vulnerable and impressionable children are as young readers.
She explains how she began reading at an early age. The only available books were British and American.
“When I began to write. . . I wrote exactly the kinds of stories I was reading. All my characters were white and blue-eyed They played in the snow. They ate apples. They talked a lot about the weather. . .
She goes on to explain how the unintended consequence of this early reading was that “I did not know that people like me could exist in literature.”
How is your culture represented in literature? Please share you thoughts in the comments below.
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9 Comments... join the discussion!
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Great presentation, it’s one good reason to read many travel writings before making your mind up if you like a place or not before visiting yourself.
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Wow! Great link!
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What an incredible speech. How true and what a way to present it. Thank you so much for sharing this.
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For a very long time I did the same thing. So this piece struck close to home. I love reading Chimamanda Adichie. If you haven’t read her short stories, try them … http://www.l3.ulg.ac.be/adichie/
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Agreed – I started reading American and British book at 8 and started writing around 11. For the longest time the characters in my head looked and lived like the characters I read. Great article.
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What a truly honest perception…a beautiful reminder to us all to look beneath the surface & examine our views.
To answer the question asked at the end of the article…
I have been privileged to grow up as part of several cultures. I am an American, but my parents are from the former Yugoslavia so I identify strongly with my roots, as well as the ‘immigrant culture’ of the United States.
I won’t say much about the first, because I am sure many people know of the wealth of literature out there sharing the diverse amount of stories that fall under that category.
As for the former Yugoslavia, much of the literature (as well as the films, news, etc) that reaches other places is of the single-story variety. The focus is primarily on war, conflict, turmoil, bloodshed…to those that have never been there, the entire region is a war-torn land, full of nothing but poor peasants. I brought a friend to Serbia with me a few years ago, and he was astonished to see that there are cities full of fashionable people laughing in cafes all over the streets, sharing their lives. The street festivals & celebrations of life, the juxtaposition of Balkan Beatboxers & breakdancers next to Megadeth concert posters, the gardens in front of each home full of roses were all unexpected based on the single story.
The single stories leave out the strength of these people, the story that while there is struggle, they struggle to survive just like anywhere else, which makes them survivors. Conflict does not diminish them as a people – it makes them grow stronger. While there are old women in babushkas selling flowers on the street, there are also people who prefer a simpler ‘peasant’ life of growing food on the earth & raising families. They leave out the life-force of the gypsy kids running around time trying to think of clever ways to get your spare change. These stories neglect the fact that none of these people are the ones making the bombs that have been dropped on this land.
The American-Immigrant is also portrayed in a certain light. While the struggle of immigrants to make a new life in America can be very real, there is so much more to it than being a refuge escaping from the terrors of somewhere far away & working in slaughterhouses & factories to make it. The true stories are not ones of pity, they are ones of courage, bravery, sacrifice and triumph.
The best stories of these I learned by spending a decade in NYC asking taxi cab drivers about their second lives – the families they left behind & were sending money to, the degrees & places of recognition they held in their homelands before coming to America & having to start again from a lower position because in this country, many of their degrees & positions were deemed worthless.
I also learned how important the viewpoint of the person reading or hearing the story is in relation to all this. I had a friend of a friend ask me if she could do her masters thesis on me. She wanted to learn about a 1st generation American & what it was like to be brought up in 2 cultures. I was pleased to share with her, but was very disappointed when the things she chose to pick from my family stories resulted in a paper that made it all sound so very stereotypical & sad and maybe even sort of pathetic. She had left out much of the joy & beauty of my upbringing, the depth that all this mixing of cultures provided me. Maybe it was because she couldn’t get past the single stories she had been reading her whole life. I’m not sure, but it sure made me feel really strange.
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I’m subscribed to TEDtalksDirector on YouTube – the most enlightening things. They post a talk from past conferences on most week It’s fascinating. Even the ones that I don’t think I’ll like teach me more than an average day of school.
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What a great way to talk about stereotypes and how to defeat them. Fighting the single story and finding a balanced story is what we travelers aim to do when we are abroad. It’s also what I do in my job, working in export, and I am always amazed at how non travelers view the world.
Views about China have changed over the last decade, but still few Westerners realize that Singapore has the best health standards in the world and that South East Asia is in many ways more ecologically advanced than Europe. It’s hard to make the colonial/thirld world single stories go away.↵
