Entry # 5 She's a writer.

She’s a writer

Reading helps us to create an exquisite confection of the world that produces the delight of imagination but this writer believes that the discovery of reality demystifies that imaginary world creating a truthful connection with the world. At the fiftieth Commonwealth lecture, Nigerian storyteller Chimmamanda Adichie touched the heart of the audience deeply with her moving speech about the role of a writer. Writing is to enlarge our imagination through creating mystical worlds that are to touch the sensibility of another human being. Writing is a lonely quest in which vocation, seriousness are attached to a remorseless determination to reveal an intense world that claims to be discovered. The notion of “private” does not combine with the sense of writing because the virtue of writing is to unite with a random reader that is expectant to enjoy literature. She prefers realistic literature because the similarities with our world, sometimes not only they are to be treated as a record of the real but also they have the powerful possibility to infuse with meanings our world. Then, Literature as the realization of the world has the power to transform facts into truths that will help us to find humanity. On a world that quantifies death, poverty, famine or war. Literature is the search for humanity, a leap of faith that fills with delight the hearts of those who touch. Writing transcends the author because the writer is attached to a sensibility that is the voice of a citizenship that demonstrates against injustice and requires to be built stronger to create a stronger history. At the Commonwealth lecture, Chimmamanda said that writing is creating citizenship, writing is born from a genuine sensibility, and writing is the capacity to narrate perceptions and above all writing is an obsession to state that we are similar, in our differences, in the long quest for a better world.

The single story refers to the concept developed by people with a certain degree of power above other people. A dominant group projects a definite concept based on assumptions or beliefs supported inevitably by a social sensitivity created by economic variables. Accordingly to Ms Adichie, the danger of the single story demonstrates how impressionable and vulnerable everyone is in front of input that was born from blased viewpoints. Stories have the power to produce the division of a group, but Chimmamanda Adichie realizes how stories have also the power to make a better world. Consequently, people are given a unique perception about the nature of reality and how things have to behave in relation to the world. There, the single story shows people as the result of a fully power exercise from a dominant group because power makes stronger the predominant one who at the same time deposits a limited perception of other person as an alien or different. Power is justified through the financial dominant position modifying the perception of the audience of the single story to shape shift a concrete identity over another group. Furthermore, the single story not only creates stereotypes but also steals recognition from people leaving them no other option but to be labeled as “different” without dignity in their futures. The concept of “pity” was elucidated by her as an automatic response of the audience of the single story who are blinded by recurrent stereotypes reproduced massively. Conversely, she states that in order to avoid the danger of the single story, we need to produce a mental shift so as to achieve real authenticity. Real authenticity places individuals as rightful human beings with their own identity and culture with the ability to comprehend the world, the aptitude to create meaning and enough potency to speak for themselves. Stories have both the power to break the world and to humanize it; it is our final decision to choose what we like, a single place or a paradise.

Sources:

Adichie, C. (2009). The Danger of the single story. [ONLINE] Retrieved from: http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html. [Last Accessed 05/22/13].

Adichie, C. (2012). Commonwealth Lecture 2012: Connecting Cultures. [ONLINE] Retrieved from: http://www.commonwealthfoundation.com/event/commonwealth-lecture-2012. [Last Accessed 05/22/13].

Adichie, C. (2012). About the author. [ONLINE] Retrieved from: http://www.halfofayellowsun.com/content.php?page=book&n=2&f=2. [Last Accessed 05/22/13].

Tunca, D. (2012). Bibliography. [ONLINE] Retrieved from: http://www.l3.ulg.ac.be/adichie/cnabio.html. (Last Accessed 05/22/13)