A danger of a single story Essay

Literature is more or lessthing that matters. It has the mogul to change and puzzle out our minds and opinions. It has the powerfulness to change the perception of the world around us and to boost our imagination. Take us far a mode from the reality to the world of illusions and let our minds flourished with imagination. One might think how amazing it is, alone fiction as it is here today may often matter much more than than it is meant to.TED is a non-profit global community whose mission is to spread ideas usually in the form of short dialogue which last no more than 18 minutes. TED began in 1984 as a conference, and today covers wide range of topics from acquirement to philosophy to global issues in more than 100 languages welcoming mass from every discipline and culture who seek a deeper clearing of the world. two of the presenters whose ideas I will mention are novelists and story tellers. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian anglophone composer who succeeded in attracting a new generation of readers to African literature. In her novels, she is godly by the history of her nation and its tragedies that are forgotten by recent generation of westerners.Elif Shafak is a Turkish novelist born in Strasbourg, France who is the near widely read female writer in Turkey. Her books take been translated into more than twenty-five languages. Ch. N. Adichie in her talk warns that if we hear only a adept story nearly another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding. Things are not usually just dense and colour and we have to wangle every effort to open our minds and explore what is real. Elif Shafak talks around(predicate) the danger into which writers from different cultures are put at the pressure-that-makes-them-feel-as-a-representatives-of-their-cultures.She makes a strong division between fiction and reality fiction and periodic politics. Although, both of the writers are of non-western origin which to some extend make th em mentala similar in terms of pagan stereotypes, itseems that they do not cover the same view of function of a story in our lives.darn talking about the cultural and social background of these two writers, at that place are m any things in which they differ, although their life journeys have many in common. Ch. N. Adichie was born in Nigeria, Africa. She grew up in a conventional lower-middle-class family, her father was a professor and her mother was an administrator. She had a very adroit small fryhood in a very close-knit family. However, a kind of political fear invaded their lives on the place they live. However, Chimamanda was a happy shaver who was writing stories about white people, just like those who she was reading about in books. On the other hand, Elif Shafak although, she has Turkish parents, was born in France, atomic number 63 and when her parents got separated she was bringing up by her mother and her grandmother in Turkey.Her position was quite dissimila r to Adichie as she was not living in a nuclear family. She grew up in a patriarchal environs where fathers were the heads of households. She was raise as a single child by a single mother, which was at those cartridge holders, a bit unusual. Elif Shafak was an introverted child talking to her imaginary friends. She had a vivid imagination and unlike Adichie, she was not inspired by stories that she had read, tho she wrote about people she had neer seen and things that never real happened. Nevertheless, their writing experience took place at the same time. They both started to write around the age of 7 though, their style was different. Moreover, the life journey of these two women seems to be quite similar. Just like Adichie, Shafak also studied abroad. They have travelled the world and this made these women who they are nowadays. It made them being experienced, broad-minded and well-educated,-powerful-women.This leads me to the matter of stereotypes. As I mentioned, both w riters have travelled a lot and during their lives they have experienced stereotypes on their own skin. Ch. N. Adichie mentions several personalised stories from her life in which she pays attention to the stereotypes. She talks about how her roommate in the USA was surprised that she had learnt speak English so well,that she had not been raised in poverty, that music which Adichie was listening to was not different in any feature from mainstream one. Chimamanda focuses on African stereotypes that she experienced. As a result, she demonstrates that stereotypes are created by single stories, and the problem with the stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.At the same time, Elif uses her personal experience as well. Like Adichie, she attended a school abroad as well, and she experienced cultural stereotypes. She talks about the clusters based on cultural identity. The school, which she attended, was multicultural. The only problem was that each child was seen as a representative of his or her nation and every time something happened in tie-in to their nation they were ridiculed and bullied because of it. As Adichie experienced stereotypes concerning Africa, Elif Shafak came across some cultural stereotypes concerning her nationality as well and these were politics, smoking and veil. Doesnt matter she had never been smoking before, or she had never been raised in a environment where a rule of wearing a veil was obligatory, she was expected to do so because it was a general image of her nation and her culture.In contrast, the intuitive feeling of power is discussed from different points of view by these two writers. To clarify this, I will put down both of them in sequence. The most fundamental difference is in context they use. On one hand, Adichie talks about the power as the ability not just to tell the story, but also as the ability to chose which story is being told, how it is told, who tells it therefore, the ability to make from one story the definite one, the single story. She appeals not that much to writers, but to readers and people in general. She demonstrates how important it is not to see things just black and white thus, try to open our minds and explore.Without doubt, Elifs viewpoint to the question of power is quite distinct. It seems to me like the other side of the coin when she unlike Adichie, analyses the similitude between power and writer not power and reader. Shafak puts into relation power with the notion of pressure. She demonstrates howwriters are seen as the representatives of their cultures. In her talk, she manifests how world of politics affects the way stories are being written, reviewed and read. If you are a person with a situation cultural background you are expected to write informative and quality stories about your world and to show manifestation of your identity.As an illustration, Elif as a woman from a Moslem world is expected to write stories of Muslim women and preferably, the unhappy stories of unhappy Muslim women just because she happened to be one. And in connection to this, here comes the main distinction between their understanding of power. While Adichie sees a story and fiction as tools for shaping our minds by which we can understand people, nations and things what they really are, Shafak thinks that when stories are seen as more than stories, they lose their magic in other words, she says fiction is just fiction, not daily politics.In both cases one must admit that thoughts which were brought up were relevant. It doesnt matter what is your cultural background what is important it is your personal growth. These two women have stepped over the shadows of their cultural stereotypes. They pointed at a serious problem of nowadays in a context of literature and the credibility of information itselves. They both however, in a different way, open peoples minds and let us think. And this is when a story matters.