My mind map revolves around the short story “A private experience.” The author is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The meaning behind this story is that we are all humans despite our religions and differences. The mind map that I was tasked to create demonstrates my understanding of the story in many different ways, including learning and showing the key aspects of the story while also providing evidential quotes pulled straight from the story. With the help of this mind map, I could piece all of the parts from this short story together into one concise and informative diagram that can show me everything that I analyzed in the story. I was able to dig deep into the setting of the story and research the Hausa and Igbo civil war in Nigeria. This mind map also demonstrates my understanding of the story because I had to analyze the story’s theme, which is one of the most significant sections of this story. The theme is quite impactful because Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie portrayed the views. Having two people from 2 completely different backgrounds in an empty room together and a war between both sides was a moving scene. This dreadful situation could blossom a bond between the two as if they were the same. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie showed that even with all our religious and ethnic differences, deep down, we are all still the same, and we can still relate to one another. A clear example of this was when Chika and the lady talked about the pain that the lady was feeling on her breasts whenever she was breastfeeding. Chika remembered that even her mother had the same issues when she had her sixth child, and although they both come from entirely different places, they still came across the same medical problems because they are both human at the end of the day. The mind map also possesses some pictures that I have picked out to relate to the many different subcategories to demonstrate my understanding of the story. For the plot branch, I decided to use the plot diagram to directly connect it to the areas of each of the events in the story. For the symbol, I used a scarf because the symbol discovered in this story is the lady’s scarf that represents the lady’s religion and the bond between Chika and the lady. Lastly, another one of the many ways this mind map demonstrates my understanding of the story is the literary criticism that I analyzed. I decided to choose biographical criticism to explore this story further. Biographical criticism analysis required me to research the author’s life and try to. Figure out what influenced them to create the piece of literature they made. So I researched Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s past and discovered that she directly impacted the Nigerian civil war between the Hausa Muslims and Igbo Christians. Her family lost everything from the civil war, and she lost members from her family. The biographical criticism showed how Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s life directly affected the narrative of this story.