irritation for most Nigerians: our failed infrastructure, our failed government, but also by the incredible resilience of people who thrive despite the government, rather than because of it.
I don't necessarily believe that only Nigeria is failing as a county to promote and show itself to different cultures, I believe that it also depends on how different cultures do not decide to culturalize themselves into the country.
14:06So what if before my Mexican trip, I had followed the immigration debate from both sides, the U.S. and the Mexican? What if my mother had told us that Fide's family was poor and hardworking? What if we had an African television network that broadcast diverse African stories all over the world? What the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe calls "a balance of stories."
All of these possibilities could have greatly affected her life and the way she ever thought about things in general. With her not having her knowledge now, her "story" would be completely different and wouldn't be the same person. She wouldn't have experienced or wouldn't have learnt as much too.
I grew up under repressive military governments that devalued education, so that sometimes, my parents were not paid their salaries. And so, as a child, I saw jam disappear from the breakfast table, then margarine disappeared, then bread became too expensive, then milk became rationed. And most of all, a kind of normalized political fear invaded our lives.
The author lets the audience deeper into her personal life onto what she saw and dealt with as a child hanging on to her mother and father. She saw things and stories that she knew about, but did not necessarily mean that she needed to completely understand. She may have lived the poor life that she misjudged before for a while.
Nigerian men were physical abusers
I think that its really shocking how people can take a whole huge different look on one thing and relate it to a bigger thing. This makes the social system as well as different cultures spread apart instead of come together. This makes the entire situation between our countries as they part more and more everyday from the lack of information or the interpretation of different unclear definitions.
It is impossible to talk about the single story without talking about power.
I do agree with is in relation to many people and their personal lives if that is what the author means by "power". Having a story and telling your own does always come with power. Everyone's lives are filled with power and it is impossible to erase that.
Nigeria happened to have English as its official language.
It is very sad to realize how uncultured people are when it comes to meeting different people around the world. Peoples views on others differ, yet everyone always has that specific image of certain people, things, or scenarios and it doesn't ever really change. It can be overlooked and proven wrong, but the way you were raised to think affects the way you think about other things too tremendously.
It had not occurred to me that anybody in his family could actually make something.
The way she was raised has affected the way she interpreted things. She might have been taught that poor people can't do anything, but when she saw with her own two eyes, she realised that the way she perceived it was a lie. She never actually thought that there could be a way for the poor to be creative, and until she saw it herself, her perspective may have flipped, but her original idea of them will always be there, especially as a child.
I come from a conventional, middle-class Nigerian family. My father was a professor. My mother was an administrator. And so we had, as was the norm, live-in domestic help, who would often come from nearby rural villages.
The author is giving her audience context about where she comes from that can help explain how she thought depending on where and how she was raised.
I'm a storyteller.
I liked how the author decided to start by stating who she is and what she is going to do as the reader goes along, giving context of the speaker/writer.
I started to write about things I recognized.
Maybe she shifted her perspective from writing about things she didn't know about by creating it off the top of her head, to writing about actual things she knows about that she may not find as interesting.
Never mind that I had no idea what ginger beer was.
I think that its pretty interesting how the mind can create something real in your eyes when you've never actually seen it before. It is nice how she added that into her story conveying she is creative and isn't scared to talk about thing she doesn't necessarily know of.