Chimamanda Adichie

Narrative Assignment Two
Chimamanda Adichie
1. Adichie's situations is attempting to persuade an audience that a single story, an incomplete perception of how a group of people similar in one or more ways to one another are, is dangerous. To do so, Adichie begins with a story of her life. When she was younger, she'd read many stories, written in English, about European culture. When she began writing she wrote about a lifestyle unknown to her: playing in the snow, eating apples, and talking about the weather, while in her life, there wsa no snow, the people in her community ate apples, and "there was no need to talk about the weather." She believed stories could not be written about people "like her", people with "chocolate skin". All she
had ever read about were white people, people she could only imagine how they lived life, and that was her single story.

2.
The conflict in the speaker's story is overcoming the nature to believe one story to be the only story. Adichie began to realize that there were more possibilities to writing a story than one about whites when she read African books. A new world of possibility was opened to her. Throughout her life, Adichie has been struggling to overcome her own as well as help others overcome the nature to make one story the only story. When living in America, Adichie shares a story about her roomate who believed a single story. The roomate asked to hear some "tribal music and was disappointed when I turned on my Mariah Carey". The roomate was puzzled as to how Adichi spoke English so well and could even work a stove. The roomate had only been told the single story that Africa was a place of trouble, poverty, and unintelligence. Adichie admits that if she had been born in America, she too would have been surprised by her "knowledge" and "American" lifestyle. Adichie realizes that believing what you hear about a person or group of people is the only thing they can be, is detrimental. Adichie's discovery of a world of multiple stories awakened an awareness in her to forever challenge the single story, and to challenge others to do the
same.

3.
With regards to the conflict Adichie learns that everyone, herself included, is in danger of believing a single story to be the only story but that nature is able to be overcome through experience. Adichie learns that many times stereotypes derive from not the incorrect perception of another's way of life, but an incomplete one. "Start the story with the arrows of the Native Americans and not with the arrival of the British, and you will have an entirely different story." Adichie's world changes dramatically when she realizes the many stories there are, and consequently the many stories she is made of. "To only look at the negaive stories is to flatten the many stories that made me who I am." Adichie understands that the world, and the many different types of people in it, have many stories and unless all of them are heard, cannot give someone a complete picture of the whole story. And therefore, we are all very much the
same.

Malcom X
1. At the beginning of the excerpt, the writer, Malcom X, is in prison. "A street hustler convicted of robbery in 1946, he spent seven years in prison," (page 1 para. 1). X entered prison with a very limited, if any, education. Frustrated by his inability to read complicated texts, or properly write English. "every book I picked up had few sentences which didn't contain anywhere from one to nearly all of the words that might as well have been in Chinese," (page 1 para. 5). Malcom envied another prisoner who was well-educated, who "had always taken charge of any conversations he was in," (page 1 para. 5). X's world is this way because of his inability to formerly receive proper education. To fix this, he would embark on a journey that would open new doors in his life.
2. The conflict of the excerpt written by Malcom X was his illiteracy, and efforts to self-educate. "I became increasingly frustrated. at not being able to express what I wanted to convey in letters that I wrote, especially those to Mr. Elijah Muhammad," (page 1 para. 3). At the beginning of his story, Malcom is angered by his inabilities to be "even functional," (page 1 para. 3). In prison, X looked to another prisoner enviously, vying for the education Bimbi, the other prisoner, had. In prison, X discovered his desire to constantly learn, to always read. His world was this way because of his lack of formal education. X notes that "Three or four hours of sleep a night was enough for me. Often in the years in the streets I had slept less than that," (page 2 para. 8). Malcom's desire to learn everything possible to learn was brought about by his inability to convey ideas on paper, and understand other's ideas, due to his inherited economic status. He notes "I certainly wasn't seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My homemade education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America," (Page 5 para. 9). X realizes the need to educate himself in order to communicate effectively, and tackles the issue head-on.

3. By the end of the excerpt, Malcom X has learned a great amount. Malcom learned that life's trials produce great fruits, and many good things come from bad experiences. Such experiences include going to prison. Prison in and of itself is not joyful, as one is being punished for a wrong they have committed, but X sees his prison experience in a different light. "In fact, prison enabled me to study far more intensively than I would have if my life had gone differently and I had attended some college," (page 5 para. 4). In other words, Malcom is saying that he was glad to have not received a proper education at an earlier date, as he would have been caught up in all of the "many distractions, too much panty-raiding, fraternities, and boola-boola," (page 5 para. 4). Malcom's world is opened to new ideas and a new level of maturity through his 'homeade education'. Before unable to read and obtain infromation from texts, Malcom was able to enlighten his mind with world issues of the past and present, enabling him to fight those issues with his new knowledge. "Over 115 million African blacks - close to the 1930's population of the United States-were murdered or enslaved during the slave trade. And I read how when the slave market was glutted, the cannibalistic white powers of Europe next carved up, as their colonies, the richest areas of the black continent," (page 4 para. 1). Learning the importance of the way life plays out and how certain events and situations in one's life led to an increased desire to continuosly learn new things. This new desire opened up a new world to X, and caused his world to flip upside down when he realized the wrongs of the world, while doing all in his power to address those issues.