Single Story, Chimamanda, Reading African Literature

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Single Story
As people grow, they tend to adopt the story which is relayed to them. Like Chimamanda, people often assume the world is as they read or see on the television. To her, books had to have white characters, and they had to be about things she could not personally identify with. The effects of a single story often begin from a young age, and if one does not meet a different story, the single story becomes the main story.
Fortunately, for Chimamanda, she started reading African literature which presented her with an opposing view of the world and also gave her an alternative perception of what literature and books are. Slowly, people start to accept their position and to identify with local things and stories. Foreign books are not a bad read, and most of them do help to expand people’s imagination. However, most of them tend to steal one’s originality which prompts aspiring and potential writers to think they do not have a place in literature. Learning from one’s stories and surrounding is the best place to start for aspiring writers. However, a majority of aspiring writers believe they have to tilt their stories to fit the foreign or the west narrative. Unknowingly to them, they will be trading their originality for made up stories which will not echo the truth.
Single stories often gift people single perceptions about things, people, and cultures. Parents are often at fault for making their children adopt a single story about certain things in life. For example, like Chimamanda, some people grow up with negative perceptions about the poor or believing that some people are not gifted or can never achieve anything beyond their status. The same thing applies to the way the world views Africa. A majority of people from the West believe Africa is not at their level and there is no way it can ever produce people or professionals who are as gifted as theirs. The above is simply because of the single story effect, and while Africans have been trying to showcase a different story, the West is still adamant.
However, it is important to note that his kind of rhetoric is not new and its roots can be traced to ancient history. The sad bit is people still take ancient history especially when Africa is involved as the gospel truth. People unknowingly buy into the single story of other cultures and countries and seem to believe what they see on their televisions. The media has often fallen victim to portraying people, countries, and cultures as one thing oblivious to the fact that people do accept and believe their account over the truth. As Chimamanda says, “Show a people as one thing, as only one thing and that is...