阅读理解
I'm a storyteller. And I would like to tell you a few
personal stories.
I grew up reading British and American children's books.
When I began to write, I wrote exactly the kinds of stories I was reading: All
my characters were white and blue-eyed, they ate apples and talked a lot about
the weather, despite the fact that I lived in Nigeria. We ate mangoes, and we
never talked about the weather. Because all I had read were books in which
characters were foreign, I had become convinced that books by their very nature
had to have foreigners in them. Things changed when I discovered African books.
Because of writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye, I went through a
mental shift in my idea of literature. I realized that people like me,
girls with skin the color of chocolate, could also exist in literature. I
started to write about things I recognized. So what the discovery of African
writers did for me was this: It saved me from having a single story of what
books are. The year I turned eight, we got a new house boy Fide from a nearby
rural village. The only thing my mother told us about him was that his family
was very poor. And when I didn't finish my dinner, my mother would say，"Finish your food! Don't you know?
People like Fide's family have nothing." So I felt enormous pity for
Fide's family. Then one Saturday, we went to his village to visit, and his
mother showed us a beautifully patterned basket that his brother had made. I
was astonished. It had not occurred to me that anybody in his family could
actually make something. Their poverty was my single story of them.
I'm a storyteller. And I would like to tell you a few
personal stories.
I grew up reading British and American children's books.
When I began to write, I wrote exactly the kinds of stories I was reading: All
my characters were white and blue-eyed, they ate apples and talked a lot about
the weather, despite the fact that I lived in Nigeria. We ate mangoes, and we
never talked about the weather. Because all I had read were books in which
characters were foreign, I had become convinced that books by their very nature
had to have foreigners in them. Things changed when I discovered African books.
Because of writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye, I went through a
mental shift in my idea of literature. I realized that people like me,
girls with skin the color of chocolate, could also exist in literature. I
started to write about things I recognized. So what the discovery of African
writers did for me was this: It saved me from having a single story of what
books are. The year I turned eight, we got a new house boy Fide from a nearby
rural village. The only thing my mother told us about him was that his family
was very poor. And when I didn't finish my dinner, my mother would say，"Finish your food! Don't you know?
People like Fide's family have nothing." So I felt enormous pity for
Fide's family. Then one Saturday, we went to his village to visit, and his
mother showed us a beautifully patterned basket that his brother had made. I
was astonished. It had not occurred to me that anybody in his family could
actually make something. Their poverty was my single story of them.
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