WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.000 I'm a storyteller. 00:00:02.000 --> 00:00:05.000 And I would like to tell you a few personal stories 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:10.000 about what I like to call "the danger of the single story." 00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:14.000 I grew up on a university campus in eastern Nigeria. 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:17.000 My mother says that I started reading at the age of two, 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:22.000 although I think four is probably close to the truth. 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:24.000 So I was an early reader, and what I read 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:27.000 were British and American children's books. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:30.000 I was also an early writer, 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:34.000 and when I began to write, at about the age of seven, 00:00:34.000 --> 00:00:36.000 stories in pencil with crayon illustrations 00:00:36.000 --> 00:00:39.000 that my poor mother was obligated to read, 00:00:39.000 --> 00:00:43.000 I wrote exactly the kinds of stories I was reading: 00:00:43.000 --> 00:00:48.000 All my characters were white and blue-eyed, 00:00:48.000 --> 00:00:50.000 they played in the snow, 00:00:50.000 --> 00:00:52.000 they ate apples, 00:00:52.000 --> 00:00:54.000 and they talked a lot about the weather, 00:00:54.000 --> 00:00:56.000 how lovely it was 00:00:56.000 --> 00:00:58.000 that the sun had come out. 00:00:58.000 --> 00:01:00.000 (Laughter) 00:01:00.000 --> 00:01:03.000 Now, this despite the fact that I lived in Nigeria. 00:01:03.000 --> 00:01:07.000 I had never been outside Nigeria. 00:01:07.000 --> 00:01:10.000 We didn't have snow, we ate mangoes, 00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:12.000 and we never talked about the weather, 00:01:12.000 --> 00:01:14.000 because there was no need to. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:14.000 --> 00:01:17.000 My characters also drank a lot of ginger beer 00:01:17.000 --> 00:01:19.000 because the characters in the British books I read 00:01:19.000 --> 00:01:21.000 drank ginger beer. 00:01:21.000 --> 00:01:24.000 Never mind that I had no idea what ginger beer was. 00:01:24.000 --> 00:01:25.000 (Laughter) 00:01:25.000 --> 00:01:28.000 And for many years afterwards, I would have a desperate desire 00:01:28.000 --> 00:01:30.000 to taste ginger beer. 00:01:30.000 --> 00:01:32.000 But that is another story. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:34.000 What this demonstrates, I think, 00:01:34.000 --> 00:01:37.000 is how impressionable and vulnerable we are 00:01:37.000 --> 00:01:39.000 in the face of a story, 00:01:39.000 --> 00:01:41.000 particularly as children. 00:01:41.000 --> 00:01:43.000 Because all I had read were books 00:01:43.000 --> 00:01:45.000 in which characters were foreign, 00:01:45.000 --> 00:01:47.000 I had become convinced that books 00:01:47.000 --> 00:01:50.000 by their very nature had to have foreigners in them 00:01:50.000 --> 00:01:52.000 and had to be about things with which 00:01:52.000 --> 00:01:55.000 I could not personally identify. 00:01:55.000 --> 00:01:59.000 Things changed when I discovered African books. 00:01:59.000 --> 00:02:01.000 There weren't many of them available, and they weren't 00:02:01.000 --> 00:02:03.000 quite as easy to find as the foreign books. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:03.000 --> 00:02:07.000 But because of writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye 00:02:07.000 --> 00:02:09.000 I went through a mental shift in my perception 00:02:09.000 --> 00:02:11.000 of literature. 00:02:11.000 --> 00:02:13.000 I realized that people like me, 00:02:13.000 --> 00:02:15.000 girls with skin the color of chocolate, 00:02:15.000 --> 00:02:18.000 whose kinky hair could not form ponytails, 00:02:18.000 --> 00:02:20.000 could also exist in literature. 00:02:20.000 --> 00:02:24.000 I started to write about things I recognized. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:24.000 --> 00:02:28.000 Now, I loved those American and British books I read. 00:02:28.000 --> 00:02:32.000 They stirred my imagination. They opened up new worlds for me. 00:02:32.000 --> 00:02:34.000 But the unintended consequence 00:02:34.000 --> 00:02:36.000 was that I did not know that people like me 00:02:36.000 --> 00:02:38.000 could exist in literature. 00:02:38.000 --> 00:02:42.000 So what the discovery of African writers did for me was this: 00:02:42.000 --> 00:02:45.000 It saved me from having a single story 00:02:45.000 --> 00:02:47.000 of what books are. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:47.000 --> 00:02:50.000 I come from a conventional, middle-class Nigerian family. 00:02:50.000 --> 00:02:52.000 My father was a professor. 00:02:52.000 --> 00:02:55.000 My mother was an administrator. 00:02:55.000 --> 00:02:58.000 And so we had, as was the norm, 00:02:58.000 --> 00:03:03.000 live-in domestic help, who would often come from nearby rural villages. 00:03:03.000 --> 00:03:07.000 So the year I turned eight we got a new house boy. 00:03:07.000 --> 00:03:09.000 His name was Fide. 00:03:09.000 --> 00:03:12.000 The only thing my mother told us about him 00:03:12.000 --> 00:03:15.000 was that his family was very poor. 00:03:15.000 --> 00:03:17.000 My mother sent yams and rice, 00:03:17.000 --> 00:03:20.000 and our old clothes, to his family. 00:03:20.000 --> 00:03:22.000 And when I didn't finish my dinner my mother would say, 00:03:22.000 --> 00:03:27.000 "Finish your food! Don't you know? People like Fide's family have nothing." 00:03:27.000 --> 00:03:31.000 So I felt enormous pity for Fide's family. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:31.000 --> 00:03:34.000 Then one Saturday we went to his village to visit, 00:03:34.000 --> 00:03:38.000 and his mother showed us a beautifully patterned basket 00:03:38.000 --> 00:03:41.000 made of dyed raffia that his brother had made. 00:03:41.000 --> 00:03:43.000 I was startled. 00:03:43.000 --> 00:03:46.000 It had not occurred to me that anybody in his family 00:03:46.000 --> 00:03:49.000 could actually make something. 00:03:49.000 --> 00:03:52.000 All I had heard about them was how poor they were, 00:03:52.000 --> 00:03:54.000 so that it had become impossible for me to see them 00:03:54.000 --> 00:03:57.000 as anything else but poor. 00:03:57.000 --> 00:04:01.000 Their poverty was my single story of them. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:01.000 --> 00:04:03.000 Years later, I thought about this when I left Nigeria 00:04:03.000 --> 00:04:06.000 to go to university in the United States. 00:04:06.000 --> 00:04:08.000 I was 19. 00:04:08.000 --> 00:04:12.000 My American roommate was shocked by me. 00:04:12.000 --> 00:04:15.000 She asked where I had learned to speak English so well, 00:04:15.000 --> 00:04:17.000 and was confused when I said that Nigeria 00:04:17.000 --> 00:04:22.000 happened to have English as its official language. 00:04:22.000 --> 00:04:26.000 She asked if she could listen to what she called my "tribal music," 00:04:26.000 --> 00:04:28.000 and was consequently very disappointed 00:04:28.000 --> 00:04:30.000 when I produced my tape of Mariah Carey. 00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:33.000 (Laughter) 00:04:33.000 --> 00:04:35.000 She assumed that I did not know how 00:04:35.000 --> 00:04:38.000 to use a stove. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:38.000 --> 00:04:40.000 What struck me was this: She had felt sorry for me 00:04:40.000 --> 00:04:42.000 even before she saw me. 00:04:42.000 --> 00:04:46.000 Her default position toward me, as an African, 00:04:46.000 --> 00:04:50.000 was a kind of patronizing, well-meaning pity. 00:04:50.000 --> 00:04:53.000 My roommate had a single story of Africa: 00:04:53.000 --> 00:04:56.000 a single story of catastrophe. 00:04:56.000 --> 00:04:58.000 In this single story there was no possibility 00:04:58.000 --> 00:05:02.000 of Africans being similar to her in any way, 00:05:02.000 --> 00:05:05.000 no possibility of feelings more complex than pity, 00:05:05.000 --> 00:05:09.000 no possibility of a connection as human equals. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:09.000 --> 00:05:11.000 I must say that before I went to the U.S. I didn't 00:05:11.000 --> 00:05:14.000 consciously identify as African. 00:05:14.000 --> 00:05:17.000 But in the U.S. whenever Africa came up people turned to me. 00:05:17.000 --> 00:05:21.000 Never mind that I knew nothing about places like Namibia. 00:05:21.000 --> 00:05:23.000 But I did come to embrace this new identity, 00:05:23.000 --> 00:05:26.000 and in many ways I think of myself now as African. 00:05:26.000 --> 00:05:28.000 Although I still get quite irritable when 00:05:28.000 --> 00:05:30.000 Africa is referred to as a country, 00:05:30.000 --> 00:05:34.000 the most recent example being my otherwise wonderful flight 00:05:34.000 --> 00:05:36.000 from Lagos two days ago, in which 00:05:36.000 --> 00:05:38.000 there was an announcement on the Virgin flight 00:05:38.000 --> 00:05:43.000 about the charity work in "India, Africa and other countries." 00:05:43.000 --> 00:05:44.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:05:44.000 --> 00:05:48.000 So after I had spent some years in the U.S. as an African, 00:05:48.000 --> 00:05:52.000 I began to understand my roommate's response to me. 00:05:52.000 --> 00:05:55.000 If I had not grown up in Nigeria, and if all I knew about Africa 00:05:55.000 --> 00:05:57.000 were from popular images, 00:05:57.000 --> 00:06:00.000 I too would think that Africa was a place of 00:06:00.000 --> 00:06:04.000 beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals, 00:06:04.000 --> 00:06:06.000 and incomprehensible people, 00:06:06.000 --> 00:06:09.000 fighting senseless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS, 00:06:09.000 --> 00:06:12.000 unable to speak for themselves 00:06:12.000 --> 00:06:14.000 and waiting to be saved 00:06:14.000 --> 00:06:17.000 by a kind, white foreigner. 00:06:17.000 --> 00:06:19.000 I would see Africans in the same way that I, 00:06:19.000 --> 00:06:23.000 as a child, had seen Fide's family. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:23.000 --> 00:06:27.000 This single story of Africa ultimately comes, I think, from Western literature. 00:06:27.000 --> 00:06:29.000 Now, here is a quote from 00:06:29.000 --> 00:06:32.000 the writing of a London merchant called John Locke, 00:06:32.000 --> 00:06:35.000 who sailed to west Africa in 1561 00:06:35.000 --> 00:06:40.000 and kept a fascinating account of his voyage. 00:06:40.000 --> 00:06:42.000 After referring to the black Africans 00:06:42.000 --> 00:06:44.000 as "beasts who have no houses," 00:06:44.000 --> 00:06:48.000 he writes, "They are also people without heads, 00:06:48.000 --> 00:06:53.000 having their mouth and eyes in their breasts." NOTE Paragraph 00:06:53.000 --> 00:06:55.000 Now, I've laughed every time I've read this. 00:06:55.000 --> 00:06:59.000 And one must admire the imagination of John Locke. 00:06:59.000 --> 00:07:01.000 But what is important about his writing is that 00:07:01.000 --> 00:07:03.000 it represents the beginning 00:07:03.000 --> 00:07:06.000 of a tradition of telling African stories in the West: 00:07:06.000 --> 00:07:09.000 A tradition of Sub-Saharan Africa as a place of negatives, 00:07:09.000 --> 00:07:11.000 of difference, of darkness, 00:07:11.000 --> 00:07:15.000 of people who, in the words of the wonderful poet 00:07:15.000 --> 00:07:17.000 Rudyard Kipling, 00:07:17.000 --> 00:07:20.000 are "half devil, half child." NOTE Paragraph 00:07:20.000 --> 00:07:23.000 And so I began to realize that my American roommate 00:07:23.000 --> 00:07:25.000 must have throughout her life 00:07:25.000 --> 00:07:27.000 seen and heard different versions 00:07:27.000 --> 00:07:29.000 of this single story, 00:07:29.000 --> 00:07:31.000 as had a professor, 00:07:31.000 --> 00:07:36.000 who once told me that my novel was not "authentically African." 00:07:36.000 --> 00:07:38.000 Now, I was quite willing to contend that there were a number of things 00:07:38.000 --> 00:07:40.000 wrong with the novel, 00:07:40.000 --> 00:07:44.000 that it had failed in a number of places, 00:07:44.000 --> 00:07:46.000 but I had not quite imagined that it had failed 00:07:46.000 --> 00:07:49.000 at achieving something called African authenticity. 00:07:49.000 --> 00:07:51.000 In fact I did not know what 00:07:51.000 --> 00:07:54.000 African authenticity was. 00:07:54.000 --> 00:07:56.000 The professor told me that my characters 00:07:56.000 --> 00:07:58.000 were too much like him, 00:07:58.000 --> 00:08:00.000 an educated and middle-class man. 00:08:00.000 --> 00:08:02.000 My characters drove cars. 00:08:02.000 --> 00:08:05.000 They were not starving. 00:08:05.000 --> 00:08:09.000 Therefore they were not authentically African. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:09.000 --> 00:08:12.000 But I must quickly add that I too am just as guilty 00:08:12.000 --> 00:08:15.000 in the question of the single story. 00:08:15.000 --> 00:08:19.000 A few years ago, I visited Mexico from the U.S. 00:08:19.000 --> 00:08:21.000 The political climate in the U.S. at the time was tense, 00:08:21.000 --> 00:08:25.000 and there were debates going on about immigration. 00:08:25.000 --> 00:08:27.000 And, as often happens in America, 00:08:27.000 --> 00:08:30.000 immigration became synonymous with Mexicans. 00:08:30.000 --> 00:08:32.000 There were endless stories of Mexicans 00:08:32.000 --> 00:08:34.000 as people who were 00:08:34.000 --> 00:08:36.000 fleecing the healthcare system, 00:08:36.000 --> 00:08:38.000 sneaking across the border, 00:08:38.000 --> 00:08:42.000 being arrested at the border, that sort of thing. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:42.000 --> 00:08:46.000 I remember walking around on my first day in Guadalajara, 00:08:46.000 --> 00:08:48.000 watching the people going to work, 00:08:48.000 --> 00:08:50.000 rolling up tortillas in the marketplace, 00:08:50.000 --> 00:08:53.000 smoking, laughing. 00:08:53.000 --> 00:08:56.000 I remember first feeling slight surprise. 00:08:56.000 --> 00:08:59.000 And then I was overwhelmed with shame. 00:08:59.000 --> 00:09:02.000 I realized that I had been so immersed 00:09:02.000 --> 00:09:04.000 in the media coverage of Mexicans 00:09:04.000 --> 00:09:06.000 that they had become one thing in my mind, 00:09:06.000 --> 00:09:09.000 the abject immigrant. 00:09:09.000 --> 00:09:11.000 I had bought into the single story of Mexicans 00:09:11.000 --> 00:09:14.000 and I could not have been more ashamed of myself. 00:09:14.000 --> 00:09:16.000 So that is how to create a single story, 00:09:16.000 --> 00:09:19.000 show a people as one thing, 00:09:19.000 --> 00:09:21.000 as only one thing, 00:09:21.000 --> 00:09:23.000 over and over again, 00:09:23.000 --> 00:09:26.000 and that is what they become. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:26.000 --> 00:09:28.000 It is impossible to talk about the single story 00:09:28.000 --> 00:09:31.000 without talking about power. 00:09:31.000 --> 00:09:33.000 There is a word, an Igbo word, 00:09:33.000 --> 00:09:35.000 that I think about whenever I think about 00:09:35.000 --> 00:09:38.000 the power structures of the world, and it is "nkali." 00:09:38.000 --> 00:09:40.000 It's a noun that loosely translates 00:09:40.000 --> 00:09:43.000 to "to be greater than another." 00:09:43.000 --> 00:09:46.000 Like our economic and political worlds, 00:09:46.000 --> 00:09:48.000 stories too are defined 00:09:48.000 --> 00:09:51.000 by the principle of nkali: 00:09:51.000 --> 00:09:53.000 How they are told, who tells them, 00:09:53.000 --> 00:09:56.000 when they're told, how many stories are told, 00:09:56.000 --> 00:10:00.000 are really dependent on power. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:03.000 Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, 00:10:03.000 --> 00:10:07.000 but to make it the definitive story of that person. 00:10:07.000 --> 00:10:09.000 The Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti writes 00:10:09.000 --> 00:10:12.000 that if you want to dispossess a people, 00:10:12.000 --> 00:10:15.000 the simplest way to do it is to tell their story 00:10:15.000 --> 00:10:18.000 and to start with, "secondly." 00:10:18.000 --> 00:10:22.000 Start the story with the arrows of the Native Americans, 00:10:22.000 --> 00:10:25.000 and not with the arrival of the British, 00:10:25.000 --> 00:10:28.000 and you have an entirely different story. 00:10:28.000 --> 00:10:30.000 Start the story with 00:10:30.000 --> 00:10:32.000 the failure of the African state, 00:10:32.000 --> 00:10:36.000 and not with the colonial creation of the African state, 00:10:36.000 --> 00:10:40.000 and you have an entirely different story. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:40.000 --> 00:10:42.000 I recently spoke at a university where 00:10:42.000 --> 00:10:44.000 a student told me that it was 00:10:44.000 --> 00:10:46.000 such a shame 00:10:46.000 --> 00:10:49.000 that Nigerian men were physical abusers 00:10:49.000 --> 00:10:52.000 like the father character in my novel. 00:10:52.000 --> 00:10:54.000 I told him that I had just read a novel 00:10:54.000 --> 00:10:56.000 called American Psycho -- 00:10:56.000 --> 00:10:58.000 (Laughter) 00:10:58.000 --> 00:11:00.000 -- and that it was such a shame 00:11:00.000 --> 00:11:03.000 that young Americans were serial murderers. 00:11:03.000 --> 00:11:07.000 (Laughter) 00:11:07.000 --> 00:11:13.000 (Applause) 00:11:13.000 --> 00:11:16.000 Now, obviously I said this in a fit of mild irritation. 00:11:16.000 --> 00:11:18.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:11:18.000 --> 00:11:20.000 But it would never have occurred to me to think 00:11:20.000 --> 00:11:22.000 that just because I had read a novel 00:11:22.000 --> 00:11:24.000 in which a character was a serial killer 00:11:24.000 --> 00:11:26.000 that he was somehow representative 00:11:26.000 --> 00:11:28.000 of all Americans. 00:11:28.000 --> 00:11:31.000 This is not because I am a better person than that student, 00:11:31.000 --> 00:11:34.000 but because of America's cultural and economic power, 00:11:34.000 --> 00:11:36.000 I had many stories of America. 00:11:36.000 --> 00:11:40.000 I had read Tyler and Updike and Steinbeck and Gaitskill. 00:11:40.000 --> 00:11:43.000 I did not have a single story of America. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:43.000 --> 00:11:46.000 When I learned, some years ago, that writers were expected 00:11:46.000 --> 00:11:50.000 to have had really unhappy childhoods 00:11:50.000 --> 00:11:52.000 to be successful, 00:11:52.000 --> 00:11:54.000 I began to think about how I could invent 00:11:54.000 --> 00:11:56.000 horrible things my parents had done to me. 00:11:56.000 --> 00:11:58.000 (Laughter) 00:11:58.000 --> 00:12:02.000 But the truth is that I had a very happy childhood, 00:12:02.000 --> 00:12:05.000 full of laughter and love, in a very close-knit family. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:05.000 --> 00:12:09.000 But I also had grandfathers who died in refugee camps. 00:12:09.000 --> 00:12:13.000 My cousin Polle died because he could not get adequate healthcare. 00:12:13.000 --> 00:12:16.000 One of my closest friends, Okoloma, died in a plane crash 00:12:16.000 --> 00:12:19.000 because our fire trucks did not have water. 00:12:19.000 --> 00:12:22.000 I grew up under repressive military governments 00:12:22.000 --> 00:12:24.000 that devalued education, 00:12:24.000 --> 00:12:27.000 so that sometimes my parents were not paid their salaries. 00:12:27.000 --> 00:12:31.000 And so, as a child, I saw jam disappear from the breakfast table, 00:12:31.000 --> 00:12:33.000 then margarine disappeared, 00:12:33.000 --> 00:12:36.000 then bread became too expensive, 00:12:36.000 --> 00:12:39.000 then milk became rationed. 00:12:39.000 --> 00:12:42.000 And most of all, a kind of normalized political fear 00:12:42.000 --> 00:12:46.000 invaded our lives. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:46.000 --> 00:12:48.000 All of these stories make me who I am. 00:12:48.000 --> 00:12:52.000 But to insist on only these negative stories 00:12:52.000 --> 00:12:55.000 is to flatten my experience 00:12:55.000 --> 00:12:57.000 and to overlook the many other stories 00:12:57.000 --> 00:12:59.000 that formed me. 00:12:59.000 --> 00:13:02.000 The single story creates stereotypes, 00:13:02.000 --> 00:13:05.000 and the problem with stereotypes 00:13:05.000 --> 00:13:07.000 is not that they are untrue, 00:13:07.000 --> 00:13:09.000 but that they are incomplete. 00:13:09.000 --> 00:13:13.000 They make one story become the only story. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:13.000 --> 00:13:15.000 Of course, Africa is a continent full of catastrophes: 00:13:15.000 --> 00:13:19.000 There are immense ones, such as the horrific rapes in Congo 00:13:19.000 --> 00:13:21.000 and depressing ones, such as the fact that 00:13:21.000 --> 00:13:26.000 5,000 people apply for one job vacancy in Nigeria. 00:13:26.000 --> 00:13:29.000 But there are other stories that are not about catastrophe, 00:13:29.000 --> 00:13:33.000 and it is very important, it is just as important, to talk about them. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:33.000 --> 00:13:35.000 I've always felt that it is impossible 00:13:35.000 --> 00:13:38.000 to engage properly with a place or a person 00:13:38.000 --> 00:13:42.000 without engaging with all of the stories of that place and that person. 00:13:42.000 --> 00:13:45.000 The consequence of the single story 00:13:45.000 --> 00:13:48.000 is this: It robs people of dignity. 00:13:48.000 --> 00:13:52.000 It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. 00:13:52.000 --> 00:13:55.000 It emphasizes how we are different 00:13:55.000 --> 00:13:57.000 rather than how we are similar. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:57.000 --> 00:13:59.000 So what if before my Mexican trip 00:13:59.000 --> 00:14:03.000 I had followed the immigration debate from both sides, 00:14:03.000 --> 00:14:05.000 the U.S. and the Mexican? 00:14:05.000 --> 00:14:09.000 What if my mother had told us that Fide's family was poor 00:14:09.000 --> 00:14:11.000 and hardworking? 00:14:11.000 --> 00:14:13.000 What if we had an African television network 00:14:13.000 --> 00:14:17.000 that broadcast diverse African stories all over the world? 00:14:17.000 --> 00:14:19.000 What the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe calls 00:14:19.000 --> 00:14:22.000 "a balance of stories." NOTE Paragraph 00:14:22.000 --> 00:14:25.000 What if my roommate knew about my Nigerian publisher, 00:14:25.000 --> 00:14:27.000 Mukta Bakaray, 00:14:27.000 --> 00:14:29.000 a remarkable man who left his job in a bank 00:14:29.000 --> 00:14:32.000 to follow his dream and start a publishing house? 00:14:32.000 --> 00:14:36.000 Now, the conventional wisdom was that Nigerians don't read literature. 00:14:36.000 --> 00:14:38.000 He disagreed. He felt 00:14:38.000 --> 00:14:40.000 that people who could read, would read, 00:14:40.000 --> 00:14:44.000 if you made literature affordable and available to them. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:44.000 --> 00:14:47.000 Shortly after he published my first novel 00:14:47.000 --> 00:14:50.000 I went to a TV station in Lagos to do an interview, 00:14:50.000 --> 00:14:53.000 and a woman who worked there as a messenger came up to me and said, 00:14:53.000 --> 00:14:56.000 "I really liked your novel. I didn't like the ending. 00:14:56.000 --> 00:14:59.000 Now you must write a sequel, and this is what will happen ..." 00:14:59.000 --> 00:15:02.000 (Laughter) 00:15:02.000 --> 00:15:05.000 And she went on to tell me what to write in the sequel. 00:15:05.000 --> 00:15:08.000 I was not only charmed, I was very moved. 00:15:08.000 --> 00:15:11.000 Here was a woman, part of the ordinary masses of Nigerians, 00:15:11.000 --> 00:15:14.000 who were not supposed to be readers. 00:15:14.000 --> 00:15:16.000 She had not only read the book, but she had taken ownership of it 00:15:16.000 --> 00:15:19.000 and felt justified in telling me 00:15:19.000 --> 00:15:21.000 what to write in the sequel. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:21.000 --> 00:15:25.000 Now, what if my roommate knew about my friend Fumi Onda, 00:15:25.000 --> 00:15:28.000 a fearless woman who hosts a TV show in Lagos, 00:15:28.000 --> 00:15:31.000 and is determined to tell the stories that we prefer to forget? 00:15:31.000 --> 00:15:35.000 What if my roommate knew about the heart procedure 00:15:35.000 --> 00:15:38.000 that was performed in the Lagos hospital last week? 00:15:38.000 --> 00:15:42.000 What if my roommate knew about contemporary Nigerian music, 00:15:42.000 --> 00:15:45.000 talented people singing in English and Pidgin, 00:15:45.000 --> 00:15:47.000 and Igbo and Yoruba and Ijo, 00:15:47.000 --> 00:15:51.000 mixing influences from Jay-Z to Fela 00:15:51.000 --> 00:15:54.000 to Bob Marley to their grandfathers. 00:15:54.000 --> 00:15:56.000 What if my roommate knew about the female lawyer 00:15:56.000 --> 00:15:58.000 who recently went to court in Nigeria 00:15:58.000 --> 00:16:00.000 to challenge a ridiculous law 00:16:00.000 --> 00:16:03.000 that required women to get their husband's consent 00:16:03.000 --> 00:16:06.000 before renewing their passports? 00:16:06.000 --> 00:16:09.000 What if my roommate knew about Nollywood, 00:16:09.000 --> 00:16:13.000 full of innovative people making films despite great technical odds, 00:16:13.000 --> 00:16:15.000 films so popular 00:16:15.000 --> 00:16:17.000 that they really are the best example 00:16:17.000 --> 00:16:20.000 of Nigerians consuming what they produce? 00:16:20.000 --> 00:16:23.000 What if my roommate knew about my wonderfully ambitious hair braider, 00:16:23.000 --> 00:16:27.000 who has just started her own business selling hair extensions? 00:16:27.000 --> 00:16:29.000 Or about the millions of other Nigerians 00:16:29.000 --> 00:16:31.000 who start businesses and sometimes fail, 00:16:31.000 --> 00:16:35.000 but continue to nurse ambition? NOTE Paragraph 00:16:35.000 --> 00:16:37.000 Every time I am home I am confronted with 00:16:37.000 --> 00:16:40.000 the usual sources of irritation for most Nigerians: 00:16:40.000 --> 00:16:43.000 our failed infrastructure, our failed government, 00:16:43.000 --> 00:16:46.000 but also by the incredible resilience of people who 00:16:46.000 --> 00:16:49.000 thrive despite the government, 00:16:49.000 --> 00:16:51.000 rather than because of it. 00:16:51.000 --> 00:16:54.000 I teach writing workshops in Lagos every summer, 00:16:54.000 --> 00:16:57.000 and it is amazing to me how many people apply, 00:16:57.000 --> 00:17:00.000 how many people are eager to write, 00:17:00.000 --> 00:17:02.000 to tell stories. NOTE Paragraph 00:17:02.000 --> 00:17:05.000 My Nigerian publisher and I have just started a non-profit 00:17:05.000 --> 00:17:07.000 called Farafina Trust, 00:17:07.000 --> 00:17:10.000 and we have big dreams of building libraries 00:17:10.000 --> 00:17:12.000 and refurbishing libraries that already exist 00:17:12.000 --> 00:17:15.000 and providing books for state schools 00:17:15.000 --> 00:17:17.000 that don't have anything in their libraries, 00:17:17.000 --> 00:17:19.000 and also of organizing lots and lots of workshops, 00:17:19.000 --> 00:17:21.000 in reading and writing, 00:17:21.000 --> 00:17:24.000 for all the people who are eager to tell our many stories. 00:17:24.000 --> 00:17:26.000 Stories matter. 00:17:26.000 --> 00:17:28.000 Many stories matter. 00:17:28.000 --> 00:17:32.000 Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, 00:17:32.000 --> 00:17:36.000 but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. 00:17:36.000 --> 00:17:39.000 Stories can break the dignity of a people, 00:17:39.000 --> 00:17:44.000 but stories can also repair that broken dignity. NOTE Paragraph 00:17:44.000 --> 00:17:46.000 The American writer Alice Walker wrote this 00:17:46.000 --> 00:17:48.000 about her Southern relatives 00:17:48.000 --> 00:17:50.000 who had moved to the North. 00:17:50.000 --> 00:17:52.000 She introduced them to a book about 00:17:52.000 --> 00:17:55.000 the Southern life that they had left behind: 00:17:55.000 --> 00:17:59.000 "They sat around, reading the book themselves, 00:17:59.000 --> 00:18:05.000 listening to me read the book, and a kind of paradise was regained." 00:18:05.000 --> 00:18:08.000 I would like to end with this thought: 00:18:08.000 --> 00:18:11.000 That when we reject the single story, 00:18:11.000 --> 00:18:14.000 when we realize that there is never a single story 00:18:14.000 --> 00:18:16.000 about any place, 00:18:16.000 --> 00:18:18.000 we regain a kind of paradise. 00:18:18.000 --> 00:18:20.000 Thank you. 00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:28.000 (Applause)