Final

            During the semester, one of the main ideas that came up in almost every class was Chimamanda Adichie’s “The Danger of a Single Story”, which gives only a one sided version of a story. In Adichie’s TED talk that we watched in class, she started off by explaining the types of books that she used to read when she was a kid living in Nigeria. She claimed that most of the books she read were written about British men who ate apples, drank ginger beer, and were blue eyed. This was Adichie’s first understanding of the dangers of a single story. She only learned the stereotypes about British men, but found out that she too was guilty of forming single stories. She later found out that other writers have done the same thing to her culture. She began to understand that literature does not have a single story, and it never will. It all became a reality to her when she went off to college for the first time. Her roommate was shocked at how well she could speak English and didn’t think she would be as “cultured” as she was. The single story is a phenomenon around the world that everyone at some point is guilty of forming. We have all fallen for the “single story” at one time in our lives, and it can completely change someone’s perspective of a person, culture, and even an entire country. We can connect the basics of a single story to just about everything we had read or watch during the semester. 

The first example that I would like to talk about is how the single story connects to Elif Shafak’s “Three Daughters of Eve”. This book tells us about a Turkish woman named Peri, who struggles with her faith, along with many other things throughout the novel. The main three woman in the novel are Peri, Shirin, and Mona, and they all have their separate ways of celebrating their faith, or religion. In the novel, all three of them moved into an apartment with each other and Shirin refers to them all as the “Sinner, the Believer, and the Confused.” This quote describes them and how they are all connected but at the same time all very different. Each had different ways that they expressed their faith by accepting it, questioning it, and denying it as a whole. Although they have similar beliefs when it comes to faith, each has a different standpoint on how they express those beliefs.When talking about the headscarves, Mona and Shirin both share different ideas that can be justified either way. Whichever way that you look at it, they are all different in unique ways, which blocks out the idea of what a single story suggests about the Muslim culture. A single story based on the Muslim belief system is that they have to wear headscarves and they all believe in the same thing. This novel proves a different point, that Muslim women can be complex and different from each other. They do have different ideas of what it means to be a Muslim woman which is showing the growth of humanity and the single story ideology. 

In today’s world, Muslim religion carries a bad taste in some mouths.  In Dalia Mogahed’s TED talk; she spoke of the horrific situation that happened on September 11, 2001. She mentioned that even today, some Muslims are still ashamed of going out in public because of the constant attention on them, as if they impose danger into someone else’s life. Her main idea throughout the TED talk was that Muslim people today are still stereotyped for what happened on that tragic day. Even after 18 years, Muslim people have to deal with the weight on their shoulders because a few horrible people decided to kill all these innocent people. Labeling September 11th as a “single story” is a hard thing to do, but you have to have an open mind when it comes to those who were not involved by any means. Imagine being a Muslim, and going the airport all of the extra precautions they have to go through. I can tell you that even in today’s world we can all admit that the Muslim will get more looks and glances towards them than a white male in the airport. A single story, or event in this case, does not define all the other Muslims around the world. Mogahed expressed that Muslim families were petrified of going out in public during these times due to fear of harm. The single story that “all Muslims are bad people and they are trying to kill Americans”, but that isn’t true at all. What happened on September 11th was a great tragedy to America,but those terrible men that did that were a small number compared to all of the amazing Muslim people in the world. Mogahed is trying to enlighten those who see Muslims as a threat in order to change their perspective and shed some light onto the high majority of Muslims that are just like you and me.

Earlier in the semester I went to see High Point University’s production of Borrowed Babies, multiple scenes from the play made me think back to our class and what we have been learning. The first one that comes to mind is when one of the four girls is moving to NYC to pursue her dream in art and she convinces another of the girls to go with her and when she tells her parents her father basically tells her that if she chooses to go that she will be cutting all ties with the family because only whores and sluts chose to live in the city alone. This relates back to a single story that we have been learning about. Her father had envisioned her marrying his boss’s son and being a mother and never thought of her being a working woman. Another aspect of the single story shown in this play is when they do not allow Judy to keep Katherine because she is not married. The agency doesn’t see how well the baby is doing under Judy’s strict schedule of care and how much she truly loved the baby. They could only imagine that if and only if there was a man in the house then the baby would’ve been taken care of financially that Judy could not possibly be doing it on her own. 

Throughout Mogahed and Adichie’s TED talks, Shafak’s novel, Borrowed Babies, and even times that I have experienced myself, I realized that all these events and readings can be connected back to the theme throughout the semester which is the single story.There are people all over the world that come from different cultures, races, and genders that go through similar struggles. The world is not composed of just a single story, but it is made up of multiple stories that come from all different viewpoints and aspects from a person’s upbringing. These ideas can lead to oppression and discrimination, which is why it is so important to us as readers, to learn about it and try and teach younger generations on how to help the cause. We cannot fully understand the movements due to concepts like the single story, but we can help them, and maybe even guide them, in order for them to reach their goals in their fight for equality within their culture. During the semester, I was able to learn so much not just about single stories, but about myself. This course has opened up my mind to many different situations. I was guilty of forming single stories about people, but now I am conscious about it and know how to think about both sides of the situation.