So there are two more chapters of Sven on my sister blog www.makingstuffup.com/srilankastory , but I’m feeling rather bad about my treatment of Thomas in them. You see, I don’t want to paint the usual portraits of ‘Africans’. I don’t even want to call them ‘Africans’. And yet as ever I am drawn to the stereotypes, the cliches and most of all, to any sort of plot that I feel works.
Chimamande Adichie, Nigerian author of the extremely readable ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ takes a convincing stand on the need to hear multiple stories about a country, and for people of every country to learn to tell and listen to different storeis about themselves. Can that extend to a white person writing about a non-white country or is that too deemed post-colonialism? Listen to her speech on ted.com or on You Tube
http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html
