Project DESCRIPTION
For this project, we studied the danger of a single story. For this we focused mainly on Africa, and the history behind it. We read the book, Things Fall Apart. Although it was written before the Europeans came to “socialize” them, it still was a show that all that we thought was untrue. We created our own story, as well as a book cover or an art piece. At the end we had an exhibition, that showcased our stories to the community.
Enduring Understandings
The danger of a single story, really is dangerous. We have so many stereotypes about everyone, and especially the people in Africa. I understood that we really should get to know the culture and the beliefs of other countries. Now I know that no matter how uncivilized we think another culture is, they might think that we are more uncivilized than they are.
The writing
In the writing portion of this project, I felt that I could have done a lot better job. It had really good potential to be super great, but at the end I ran out of time and did not have a great ending or a great storyline. Even though it was really long and captured what I wanted to get across to the readers, I know that I could have wrote it to have more emotion and description.
The art
Art is not my best skill. I am a lot better writer than I am an artist. What I tried to do is capture a scene in my story. There was a scene where my main character was in peace and what he saw, in the Victoria Falls, was incredibly beautiful. With that in mind I tried to re-create that for my book cover.
personal growth
This project I found very engaging. Though the book was a little hard to follow sometimes, it was still good to read. I know that no matter how “weird” we think a costume is, we should still respect it. Also when we read an article about our culture, we found it “weird” as well. I have found that respect is one of the best qualities that you can have, and you never know when you will find yourself in another country, with very different costumes than yours.