Know the Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE

This is my first blog on a Nigerian novelist. This post is a task-based on Google Classroom as academic reading and reflecting understanding assigned by Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad Sir regarding ‘Knowing the Author’- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The task is to listen to the talks of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

• The Danger of Single Story

• We Should All be Feminist

• Importance of Truth in Post-truth Era

Click on the link to navigate to Sir’s blog on ‘Talks by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’.

As a response, we have to contemplate certain radical issues and understand the views of Adichie as well as to interpret it.

                                    The Nigerian novelist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, well known for her novel ‘Purple Hibiscus’ set in postcolonial Nigeria reflecting economic difficulties. 
                                                   Well, what gives interest in reading African Literature? Why to read and appreciate those suppressed narratives that disturb us and turn us upside down? It’s a matter of fact that right from the initial stage of reading Literature particularly English Literature, students minds are diverted to British colonialist perspectives like how they see the world around them and how they interpret the surroundings in the most derogatory way that heightens their position as being a more sophisticated society (sometimes pretending more to be superficial) and decreases the rate of critical thinking for the ‘other to British’! It can be assumed that-

‘If White literature provides a starter of beautifulness, their aristocracy and fair mentality than other literature provides an ignored and power-packed lunch of suppressed sensibilities that is usually deeply moving’ 

                              Perhaps this must be the reason behind why Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe” has a larger group of readers (people who prefer starters) than Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” and John Coetzee’s “Foe” which highlight the original course of colonialism. 

Well, here are my observations of all the three videos-

1) Talk on importance of Story / Literature-

In this talk - Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice -- and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding. (Source- Dr. Dilip Barad Sir's blog)

                                         I feel glad to hear and observe the perspective of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in this video. This video reminds me of the desire of a young girl for blue eyes living with her psychologically fractured family in Lorain, Ohio. Hope your guess is Toni Morrison’s ‘The Bluest Eye’. It’s not her intuition or her sole objective was to have blue eyes but it is the society and her own family who plays a prominent part in converting her psyche to be under the dominance of whiteness as a paragon of beauty. So in this way, as Adichie mentions- Either the books of British writers or particularly European writers or the society driven to ‘European mindsets’ rules our surroundings and sometimes our own self. It becomes hard at the earlier stage to identify the critical observations and things that differs from culture to culture.  Then with the understanding, we try to cope up with the European narratives and try to identify our own culture and the huge difference there lies in between. I definitely agree with this point of Adichie where she observes that the British and American books have opened a new world for her, in fact, it does for everyone. But reading the native novels can enhance the ability to understand one’s own culture in a very different way. Further, she makes a marking statement where she observes what the discovery of African writers did for her is-

“It saved me from having a single story of what books are.”

                                         And furthermore she adds her family background and an anecdote where she observes how the process of conditioning works, like the account of Fide, for example, she was told that he is poor and from time to time was given his illustration of being poor so that she could feel blessed that she has a good family with stability. So it naturally becomes impossible to see Fide’s other side of the story or other possibly good traits because the poverty was her single story of them. In the same manner, we have a sole narrative before we explore new and different patterns. In the same manner, she shares the incident of her roommate when she got shifted that how her roommate also had a single story of Africans and the continent Africa ‘a single story of catastrophe’. So here is the observation of what a single frame means and how it is framed-

“If I had not grown up in Nigeria, and if all I knew about Africa were from popular images, I too would think that Africa was a place of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals, and incomprehensible people, fighting senseless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS, unable to speak for themselves and waiting to be saved by a kind, white foreigner. I would see Africans in the same way that I, as a child, had seen Fide's family.

This single story of Africa ultimately comes, I think, from Western literature. Now, here is a quote from the writing of a London merchant called John Lok, who sailed to west Africa in 1561 and kept a fascinating account of his voyage. After referring to the black Africans as "beasts who have no houses," he writes, "They are also people without heads, having their mouth and eyes in their breasts."

                                    This is indeed where a single narrative helps us to understand the surface level of a culture or society like she mentions people often believe and refer to Africa as a country! Because they have the same age-old single narrative with them until they find out themselves. It is impossible to talk about a single story without talking about power. With reading as well as experiencing or witnessing, we become acquainted with the layers of the world, the different narratives.  

2) We Should All Be Feminist

“Speech is Masculine and Silence is Feminine”

                           It seems odd, right? But it’s true. You must be wondering why I am using this kind of remarks to words and actions. Well, if our every action and emotion is given the concept of gender than how will things go or progress? A matter to consider here in this video is one such common example of ‘monitor ship’. Adichie shares an anecdote in this video where she says that she wasn’t allowed to monitor the class just because she was a girl. So will it be okay if I say ‘monitoring’ is a masculine word and so no females are allowed to do so? Adichie says-

“I very much wanted to be the class monitor. And I got the highest score on the test. Then, to my surprise, my teacher said that the monitor had to be a boy. She had forgotten to make that clear earlier because she assumed it was ... obvious.

A boy had the second highest score on the test, and he would be monitor. Now, what was even more interesting about this is that the boy was a sweet, gentle soul who had no interest in patrolling the class with the cane, while I was full of ambition to do so. But I was female and he was male, and so he became the class monitor. And I've never forgotten that incident.”

                                   I like the way of presenting reality in this video that a girl who possesses the mentality of equality is called a feminist either in a customary or in an intentional tone. So, it is better that we should all be feminists. I would like to quote Margaret Atwood's quote-

"The Other Woman will soon be with us," the feminists say. But how long will it take, thinks Roz, and why hasn't it happened yet?" (The Robber Bride,392)

One of the research was done on this concept where it went to examine the ways of fantasizing affects woman's concepts of themselves and their relations with other women. 

3) Talk on importance of Truth in the Post-Truth Era

I really like the views of Adichie and I truly appreciate her perspective analysis of Post truth. This is a must watch video. She observes that generally, people in the twenty first century has a lot of things around them to get confused or rather to believe in it so easily that sometimes, it may happen that the information they carry may be not pure or correct. So, from the whole broken glass, truth is like the mini pieces of that glass, it doesn't corry the whole potential to be a sole and complete entity but it's a collective thing. 

There is no such thing as complete truth.