Category: Grade 11

My 500-Worder for the Mind Map Project:

In A Private Experience, author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie explores the idea of being kind to others, regardless of their differences, and to not fall victim to the danger of a single story, a recurring theme in her literature and media in general. And, in the story, she uses Chika to convey someone learning about the idea of the danger of a single story, about Chika knowing about events like the riots and the chaos that ensues through the media, but then having to live those experiences first-hand, just like others must do often.

Chika starts off the story without any experience with the danger of a single story, very privileged and unknowing to the hardships of others, and makes unruly assumptions about the woman with whom she shares the abandoned store. Then, over the course of the story, Chika grows, learning about the Hausa woman’s hardships and getting over her lack of knowledge about less fortunate people, through the conversation and actions between her and the Hausa woman. Because of the situation that both Chika and the Hausa woman find themselves in, Chika decides to help the other woman after she, very spontaneously, tells Chika about a problematic medical problem. When Chika helps the woman, she shows compassion, and her newfound understanding of the similarities of the Hausa woman and herself.

Chika also learns by getting to see beyond everything the media says, something that very likely influenced her given how she was raised in upper-middle class in Lagos, Nigeria. So, since she was raised in the upper-middle class, she wouldn’t know of the hardships, sacrifices and burdens that poorer and less fortunate people have, but still she shows how she learned about all those, thanks to her reaction to reading the article from The Guardian, showing that she realizes that not all the ‘Hausa-speaking Muslim people from the North’ are bad people who have a tendency of violence against non-Muslims (‘and in the middle of her grief, she will stop to remember that she examined the nipples and experienced the gentleness of a woman who is Hausa and Muslim.’).

The Mind Map represents my understanding of the story thanks to the amount of inference that was put into learning very deeply about all the aspects of the story. Because of all the work that was put into learning about every nook and nuance about the story, to have to lay it out concisely, and to have it all connect to a theme and come together, the Mind Map shows how I understand the story and its ideas very well, and how I can put it nicely there. Specifically, the theme, characterization, and the autobiographical literary criticism, all line up very cleanly around the same idea, which was the danger of a single story, which Adichie likes to reference in her work.