“The danger of a single story” shared the struggle of being used to only seeing things from one point of view. Adiche shared her experiences growing up only reading books with the same settings and characteristics; not realizing there is a world beyond what was in her books. Although Adiche grew up different from the things she read she never fully realized that people that looked and lived like her could exist in literature. Even in Adichie’s adulthood she realized how this fixed mindset could follow her. When visiting Mexico she misjudged the lives of the citizens there due to what was depicted of them in the media at the time. All of these experiences allowed her to grow and learn to understand things from every view instead of going based on how things were perceived because of the world around her.
When Adiche mentioned her experience with seeing literature one way because of the books she read, it reminded me of my childhood experience. When i was younger I always viewed being white as more beautiful and acceptable than being black. The shows i watched and books i read always glorified white characters and had little to no black representation which resulted in me not seeing the beauty within me and my own culture. This is relevant to us today because it brings attention to the reasons people have the mindsets they do. A lot of people never think outside of the box or consider someone else’s experiences or point of view which causes them to wrongfully assume things about other people and cultures. This mindset just leaves them in an ignorant state to which they may not even realize. I believe Professor Barnes assigned this to open our view on how different situations in our life could’ve caused the way we view things and how this mindset even affects how people view us.
One thought on “Ramiyah Conversation 2”
I like how you used your own childhood experience to relate to story. where because of the way books were written with people with white people with blonde hair blue eyes being primarily dominant through different books, and there being a very scarce number of books about black people it lead you to believe white people were more beautiful/or acceptable than black, all because you did not get the full story with the limited amount of opposing books.