Chimamanda Adichie's The Thing Around Your Neck is a collection of her short stories she has written over the years. Starting it recently, we just read "Headstrong Historian" in class, which takes place in Nigeria when Europeans began colonizing Africa in the later 19th century. An interesting quote is made from one of the short story's characters named Ayaju, who is of slave descent and a traveler. Nonetheless, she says that they must "learn the ways of these foreigners, since people ruled over others not because they were better people but because they had better guns...." After discussing this in class, it makes sense, as this is commonly seen throughout human history. For example, when Spanish conquistadors invaded South America just a couple decades after Columbus's arrival, they dominated the Inca, Aztecs, and other indigenous peoples with their steel swords and guns, unlike the Native Americans who had weak bows and arrows and wooden clubs. With European colonization in Nigeria, the local Nigerians are forced to obey the ways of the foreigners "not because they were better people but because they had better guns."
Spacing away from "Headstrong Historian," Chimamanda Adichie stated, "How [stories] are told, who tells them, when they're told, how many stories are told are really dependent on power." What I think Adichie means by this is that whoever tells the story and exactly how they tell it have the ultimate power over it. It can be intentional or accidental, but either way, they have complete power of the story. For example, if you want to tell children a story a little too much for them, you can edit the story to avoid the bad parts. If you are with your friends at a campfire and are telling a scary story, you can also edit it to make it way scarier than it actually is. Either way, the storyteller has the ultimate power of the story to manipulate it however they like, which is what stories "told are really dependent on power."
