The Danger of a single story

Tones

Tone 1: Honesty, reflective/nostalgic

Tone 2: reclaiming/ questioning

Tone 3: Candid

GAP

G- speech to an intelligent audience as a festival/conference of ideas

A- respectful, intelligent, educated, worldly

P- inform, persuade, reflect, memorialise

Structure- taken chronologically though key moments in her life.

Tone 1

Quote 1

' I wrote (...) all my characters were white and blue-eyed,'

-Determiner 'all' denote ethnicity different to her own, but used to evidence the significant effect her own story had on her

- cliche of English culture 'white and blue-eyed'

Quote 2

' all my characters are white and blue eyed, they played in the snow they ate apples. They talked a lot about weather.' , ' we didn't have snow, we ate mangoes we never talked about the weather.'

- parallel syntactic mirroring, show the difference in her culture and the English culture she read about and believed

Quote 3

' Because all I had read the books, in which characters were foreign, I had become convinced that books by their very nature, had to have foreigners in them'

-foreign, become convinced, foreigners

-passive construction-dominate white western narrative acted upon her

Tone 2

Quote 1

'Domestic helps', 'Nearby rural villages', 'very poor','pity

-noun phrases

The juxtaposition builds sympathy by betraying life of simplicity, limitations. Perhaps evoking generalised perspective about such families.

Quote 2

' The poverty was my single story'

-Irony and honesty all guilty of such generalisation, self reflection

Quote 3

'Tribal music', 'She assumed I did not know how to use a stove.'

- Stereotype/single story

- emphasis. Shock speech, so pauses expected. Righteous indignation disbelief experiencing such ignorance.

Tone 3

Quote 1

' in comprehensive people,fighting senseless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS,

- Listing- slowly deteriorating generalisation of Africa to elucidate how easily generalisation can shift into racism

Quote 2

' There were endless stories of Mexicans(...) that sort of thing'

- another admittance of unpalatability. Necessary precursor to learning + growth

Quote 3

'Stories matter. Many stories matter.'

Short sentences + amplification ' matter' emphasise how everyone should be open minded and should not be brainwashed with one view.