“Finish your food! Don’t you know? People like Fide's family have nothing.”
The discussion between Adichie and her mother is about the unfortunate circumstance of Fade and his inability to change his status. Fade comes from a low-income family in the village, and Adichie's mother tells her stories of poverty-stricken families. Throughout her childhood, Adichie believes that Fade is doomed to die in poverty and there is no way he can change his status.
“They sat around, reading the book themselves, listening to me read the book, and a kind of paradise was regained.”
When Alice Walker's relatives migrate from South America to North America, they expect only good things because they have been told it is heaven. However, the assumption that North America is a heaven is based on a single story that dehumanizes life in South America. The people living in South America believe that they are in hell. Paradoxically, life in North America is not easy because immigrants are discriminated against, and opportunities are limited. Alice Walker reminds her relatives in North America of the good things and opportunities they have left in South America. The relatives finally agree that a single-sided story is dangerous.
"I was also an early writer, and when I began to write, at about the age of seven, stories in a pencil with a crayon illustration that my poor mother was obliged to read, I wrote exactly the kind of stories I was reading: All my characters were white and blue-eyed, they played in the snow, they ate apples, and they talked a lot about the weather, how lovely that the sun had come out."
The quote is significant because it shows the narrator's ambition to become a writer. However, the narrator is influenced by Western literature, which shows superiority to African culture. The narrator thinks that a black character with dark skin cannot fit in her book. Hence, she prefers to use all-white characters because they are beautiful, smart, and intelligent. The quote shows the influence of Western culture on Africans, making them believe that they are inferior in most aspects of life.
