In the second short paper for this course I wrote about the two Ted talks done by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Each talk that she gave was extremely powerful in the message that they gave, one challenging the nature of the worlds tendency to only tell a story from a single point of view, the other shattering preconceived notions of feminism in Africa.
In the TED talk that Adichie gave in 2009, she recounts to the audience how she avidly read books as a young child, and those that were most widely available were written by British and American writers. These writers told stories with experiences that children in their own countries could relate to, which led to Adichie only writing stories with characters who had blue eyes and blond hair, who ate food that was foreign to most African countries, and who led very different lives than the ones Adichie had experienced and observed. She expands more broadly, to examine how perspectives on different parts of the world and specific groups of people can be shaped and molded by a single story. Her 2009 talk reminded us all that there is never just one single story, but millions of lived experiences that are unique, and yet universally relatable.
In the 2012 TED talk, Adichie seems to switch focus, discussing feminism, including her negative experiences with the word and its concept. She depicts the first time that she was ever called a feminist, and how her relationship with the word changed over time. At first, she felt she had to distance herself from the stereotype that came with the word feminist, particularly in Africa. For many, feminism was tied to a woman’s relationship to a man, and specifically to marriage. A woman who defined herself as a feminist was unhappy due to failed relationships with men. Adichie continued to consider herself a feminist, but after publishing her novel, she is approached by a Nigerian academic who informs her that feminism is a western idea that has corrupted the minds of Africans. Reasoning with herself that this is not the case, and by drawing on her own experiences and family history, she rejects the stereotype, or the single story, of feminism as an African woman.
In all of this I connected the topics that she discussed to the effects of colonialism and the collapsing African state as the colonial powers left. Things like toxic masculinity and cultural colonialism ( one nations culture overpowering and permeating throughout another nation) are long lasting side effects of the notions that Adichie challenges in her talks.