Interpersonal communication and the self and perceiving others
In my life above are some of the roles that I have ever managed in my life. I have ever been a storyteller. I want to tell some of the stories that at a very young age while growing up, my mother told me that I began reading while I was at the age of two years. However, I find two quite early for me, and I would probably tell that I began reading at four. For this case, I was an early reader, and most of my reading was based on American and British children’s books. At the tender age, I was also a writer. While at the age of seven years, I could write stories in pencils. I could write exactly the kind of stories that I was reading.
Based on my impression, people might perceive me as an African; I could not speak good English. An example is when my roommate’s perception did not align with how I see myself. It was when I was 19 years of age when I traveled to the US to study. My roommate got shocked with me because she couldn’t understand where I had learned to speak fluent English; where I also left her in confusion when I told her that my country Nigeria, we used English as our official language. My roommate later asked me if she could, therefore, listen to my tribal music. I left her confused when I showed her a tape of Mariah Carey, where she assumed that I could not even use a stove.
My perceptions have ever been wrong about a person when I was amazed that my roommate had felt sorry for me even before she came to meet me when her general look towards me as an African girl, let me say that was such kind of a patronizing one. I came to realize that she only knew of a single story about Africa. The single-story was about the kind of catastrophes in Africa. In her view, she reasoned that there was no possibility that Africans could be similar to her in whichever way. She saw no possibility of human beings being equal to others. I later realized that my perceptions were wrong because I did not identify myself as an African before I stepped into the US. However, while in the US, whenever there was an issue concerning Africa, people turned to me while not knowing that I never knew even some places like Namibia. However, I came to embrace my identity.
Reference
https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-1/danger-single-story