Aimi 1

Benito Aimi

Joseph Longhany

ENC1101- composition

5 February 2024

Synthesis:

Adichie, almost like she collaborated with Deborah Brandt, demonstrates Brandt’s points

on appropriation through literature effectively using stories from personal experiences.

Paraphrasing Brandt, she explains that the means by which literature is displayed, and who it is

displayed to, essentially create stereotypes based solely off of exposure. This is evident in

schools, were certain literature is not allowed because of taboo reasons, churches, where the

information conveyed is suited to a certain agenda, and in the workplace, where employers

control the literature that employees see and or use in their daily life. To be more exact, I am

examining the falsified imagery that can be created by reading one single work that classifies a

whole people. Adichie explains that when she started writing, she often wrote characters with

characteristics found only in foreign literature, not conclusive of her own lifestyle/personality.

She also states that when she first moved to the United States for university, her roommate

assumed that since Adichie was African, she was incapable of using a stove, she listened to tribal

music, and had a poor family. Brandt’s Literacy Sponsors and Adichie’s ted talk on a single story,

both pair excellently in demonstrating where literature and sponsors fail. They fail the people

using them once appropriated stories of people are exposed to society by influential characters

with credibility. (For example, the Englishman John Lok, who Adichie uses in her story to
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explain that his misrepresentation of the African people created an image that is offensive and

unfavorable.)

So You Can Walk A Mile In My Shoes

Everyone remembers the old saying, “Try walking a mile in my shoes,” but no one ever

takes off their shoes, hands it to the person they are speaking to, and expects them to put them on

and walk a mile. The point of the saying is to try to make you change your perception about any

one situation. Well, I believe literature is the best way to walk a mile in anyone’s shoes. I can

walk in the shoes of Jesus and his disciples, Shakespeare, Napoleon, and the list goes on and on,

all throughout history. I am going to tell you a story that not only makes you walk a mile in my

shoes, but examines all the miles I’ve ever walked and how each of those led me here.

We begin with almost everyone’s first literary experience, the parents. My parents were

amazing caregivers, and even better teachers. I remember my mother telling me that I learned to

speak English and Spanish around the same time. I attended school very briefly in Argentina, but

I learned “house” castellano for the most part. My parents would gather friends at the house and I

would sit on my mom’s lap just absorbing all these mannerisms, words, idioms that later on

created my identity as an Argentine. Now, having all the knowledge I gained from 19 years of

life, I can attribute my early immigration into the United States as a key transformation of the

fate of my literacy. These aren’t realizations I would have as a child of course but coming from a

majority socialist (used to be) dictatorship allows me to view the American perspective from the

outsider’s point of view. At 2 years old my parents enrolled me in a private, catholic school.

From as early as kindergarten I remember reading scripture at mass. However, I do not see this
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as a large advancement or definition of my literary identity, but training in the art of public

speaking, which I can comfortably say is one of my strong suits. I read at mass all throughout

elementary and middle school, but I examine these years differently now. Once I reached 7th

grade and started thinking for myself, I realized that the methods and transmission of literature in

education systems had become chore-based, as the lack of interest in reading books was sky-

rocketing. Teachers would force reading assignments on uninteresting novels or boring

textbooks, because of this I never really was interested in books. Early access to the internet is

one of the main drivers of my literacy, and I believe that the internet was and still is a great

teacher, even though it can have its flaws.

Where Brandt says that sponsors of literacy control exposure in the media and education,

the internet seems to balance representation of the softer-spoken per se. I learned a lot from video

games, movies, youtube, and even more from friends and family that enjoyed these same things.

Quantifying the literature I absorbed is quite difficult honestly, but I know that a combination of

controlled exposure along with a wandering curiosity helped my literacy mature quickly,

allowing me to expand into functional applications earlier. For example, I learned some essence

of humor from Smosh, I learned recipes and cooking methods from Iron Chef, I was able to

understand advertising and commercial philosophy from exposure to thousands of commercials.

Some cartoons, depending on the writers, even taught me valuable moral lessons. The

importance of brother hood and the consequences of laziness I learned from Regular Show,

enjoying the adventures of life I learned from Adventure Time (duh), and don’t even get me

started on the thousands of lessons there are to learn from shows like Futurama, Rick and Morty,

and the Simpsons. Yes, these things are seen as childish, but most people fail to examine the true
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intent of certain aspects of media and the internet. Of course, as I grew older, my methods of

information drastically changed.

The past few paragraphs examine some of the things that formed me and my personality,

but now we will examine important events that hold some applications towards the foundation of

my “writing and reading voice”. When high school came around, I began to appreciate classic

literature. I read things like Don Quixote in Spanish in my AP literature class, Oedipus Rex, The

Odyssey, 1984 and Animal Farm, and countless poems that taught me eloquence and the art of

cryptic masking of meaning. I also gained an interest in historical works and their application to

current geopolitics. Retellings of battle, Roman war manuals, and the stories of great conquerors

and influential people. I read up on the history of religions, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism,

Hinduism, you name it. I scrutinized philosophy from stoicism, hedonism, even moral

philosophy taken from Jesus. I was exposed to court cases, governing documents, treatises, and a

lot of information about not only the American government, but an examination of the people

behind it and their psychology. Quickly, I became interested in finding the roots of systems

present in my every day life. I read on the first civilizations, first languages, how those languages

evolved and how they traveled across the Earth. To keep it concise, I wanted to learn a little bit

about what I feel is the foundation for all aspects of life. But before I dove fully into all these

things blindly, I established a method that does not involve forcing my young impressionable

mind to change, but instead views these things simply as words on paper, or clay tablets that I

can learn from or even disagree with. That is how we get to my literacy today.

With some help from students in the class, I realized that this story does encapsulate the

point of defining my literacy and where it arose from, but I do not examine how I have managed

to walk in the shoes of others like me. For this I have a few questions, have you, dear reader,
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ever experienced the need to serve others for no apparent reason, maybe just love? Have you

ever willingly said goodbye to the things that have brought you pleasure to become enlightened?

Have you ever wrote out the grievances that higher powers have done against you, knowing they

would target you? These pieces of literature, and many more like them, allow the reader to

experience something that they may have never even thought of. People like Jesus Christ,

Siddhartha Gautama(the buddha), Martin Luther, Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela,

Mahatma Gandhi, Charles Darwin, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and many, many more have

sacrificed at the most extreme even their lives to give us information we often take for granted.

We were taught to love, to forget desire, to stand up for not just ourselves, but the people who are

unable to do it themselves in this literature. Viewing life from a different perspective does not

require a complete lifestyle change, it only requires a willingness to escape your own mind and

accept the fact that hundreds, thousands, millions of people have suffered to secure us, teach us,

save us from that very same suffering. It is foolish of me to say that I understand your suffering,

but if you are a human being reading this, just know that you are not alone and I wish to walk all

the miles of your life alongside you.

Now that you have walked at least a mile in my shoes, I can say that making this sound

more like a story not a full biography is quite difficult. But a story, nonetheless, always has a

lesson to be learned. The lesson here is that anyone person’s literacy cannot be defined by their

parents and what they learned in school. Society, especially through the internet interweaves its

trends and messages into the brains of all young people now. This is important not for the grade I

get on this assignment, but for the millions of children that will now begin to develop their

literacy. It is now on us, as the teachers to ensure that we establish morality and virtue before we

expose all of the beautiful and ugly. We must teach everyone that exposure to a certain topic
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doesn’t impose on blank minds, but our attitudes and opinions on that topic will. We must teach

everyone that you are allowed to disagree, but not allowed to disrespect or force change upon

those who are different. Literacy is dying in a world of subverted consciousness, and it is now

upon us, the literate ones with a voice, to remind the masses that they have never walked a mile

in anyone else’s shoes.