This was the theme of a public lecture by Nigeria's and perhaps Africa's brightest burning young literary star, Novelist Chimamanda Adichie. The writer of the groundbreaking work, Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun, and winner of the Commonwealth and Orange Prizes for literature, explores the danger of stereotyping using a single narrative. She explores the African literary experience from the perspective of a story teller, and her audience. The Danger of building off a story, and the power of the powerful (sans the not so "other") to choose the instance from which stories are told to shape perspectives about the "other". Chimamanda's imagination has not changed since I last heard her few years ago, but she has grown. The parameters hewned by this public discourse is worth exploring, and need I say, worth sharing...I will let her do the talking..below.
Is this Nigeria's next Nobel Prize winner? Well, there is the early evidence of something beautiful. Below is an interview she did recently with CNN...this her story, I hope it is not a single story (no pun intended)- at least her perspective below on the institution of marriage which some of my buddies on another blog are clearly running with..(laughs)
