Power to Tell Stories

This week, we started reading The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Adichie. This work is a series of story collections that shows Adichie's attitude towards many subjects in her life. Adichie speaks proudly for her rights as an African American and shares her stories with the world around her. One of her story, "The Headstrong historian", described that power is the source for storytelling. This story portrays a woman named Nwamgba fighting for her own rights as well as future generations. Although opposed to education at first, she later encouraged her child, Anikwenwa, to study at schools because she realized that education is the ultimately source for power. In an attempt to save her next generations, Nwamgba sacrificed her life to give her entire family a brighter future.

Those who held power, like the government or the military, ultimately determines how the stories is presented, even if the stories are not accurate. Because those who had power usually dominates the weaker ones, there is a social inequality. I agree with Adichie's idea that "How stories are told, who tells them, when they are told, how many stories are told are really dependent on power".(Chimamanda Adichie).This thought is absolutely correct because powerful people controls the ideas of society because there is no one to challenge their power.

My experience so far this year shaped my understanding of power and privilege. I realized that not everyone gets to create their own stories to tell the world. There are always those people that controls the situation and thus how the stories are told. Many of the books we read so far solidified my view that power determines reality. These reality might even be fake, but there are few people who is brave enough to oppose it.