One of the topics discussed on #LitChat last year - a most interesting twitter chat for writers - was the use of stereotypes in literature. During our discussion, someone shared this video of the Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie, who gave a brilliant talk about "The Danger of a Single Story" that inspired this reflection. All quotes below are hers.
Her speech relates to our LitChat topic, because a stereotype is basically a simplified view of someone or something. It's natural that we mentally categorize in our minds people we've just met and things we're hearing about, tasting, or smelling for the first time. The problem is when this categorization process becomes a barrier to absorb new impressions and information on that person or thing.
For instance, when Adichie tells the tale of her going to the US to study at the university; when her roommate pitied her without having ever met her, thinking that Adichie was unable to understand the functioning of a stove because she had come from Africa.
What does her experience tell us? That her roommate had had some previous information about Africa, and had taken the rest for granted. This is what Adichie calls a single story (about Africa) and I call a limited mind set.
Now, let's come clean here. When you think of Africa, which is the first image that comes to mind? Poverty? Famish? Exquisite landscapes? "Primitive societies"? Rape? All the above?
"But, that's all true," you say. In a way it may be, but is it all that there is to know about Africa and its people?
...if all I knew about Africa were from popular images, I too would think that Africa was a place of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals, incomprehensible people fighting sensless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS, unable to speak for themselves, and waiting to be saved by a kind, white foreign.
You know what bugs me the most? How precise she is when talking about the kind, white savior.
When we have a limited mind set, we usually believe that our point of view is the best for everyone, regardless their cultural background and life experience (and our own too). Sometimes, without even realizing we think ourselves superior from someone else. Are we? Superior?
When talking about her roommate she adds:
In this single story there was no possibility of Africans being similar to her [the roommate] in any way; no possibility of feelings more complex than pity; no possibility of a connection as human equals.
This touched me deeply. Adichie summarized in that sentence how the "superior" heart sees people through the limit of its pity. The pitied people become less than human, like Locke's imaginative impression of the Africans back in the XIV century.
I love this anecdote Adichie mentions on the talking:
A student told me that it was such a shame that Nigerian men were physical abusers like the father character in my novel. I told him that I'd just read an American novel called American Psycho, and that it was such a shame that young Americans were serial murderers.
So, as writers we have the privilege (and the obligation) of seeing our stories from many points of view. We may choose to tell them from a single one, but we know what goes in the heart of each of our characters.
When I read books filled with cultural impressions, especially when they feel alien to me so diverse they are, I also feel privileged. Have you ever had close contact with the Chinese culture? What about the Japanese, the Iranian, or the Pakistani cultures?
This cultural diversity, the astounding difference in which people (even from the same cultural background) see the world, reason and deal with their own feelings and the other people's feelings, is fascinating to me.
I have learned so much from stories that portrait intensely the character's minds and hearts that I like to think that, through them, I've expanded my view of the world, or my mind set if you will.
This is what good stories do; they enrapt the reader, projecting in our heart the character's emotions, transforming a reading into a life experience. We suffer with the characters when they fall, we rejoice when they succeed, love, and are loved. And then we learn, as if their lives were ours.
I won't extend more this post; if you've read this far I'm sure you have much in mind to digest, so I'll leave you with a final reflection:
And please feel free to share your opinion. I'd love to hear it.
Note: The impressive picture of a Zimbabwe sunset was taken by Steve Evans, and I found it here. The touching picture of the African child I found here.