Analysis Of A Too-Perfect Picture By Teju Cole

In a world becoming increasingly saturated in media, the narratives of many different cultures are spreading throughout the world, and have a greater influence as people across the globe have access to these narratives. What happens, though, when the stories the world knows about a culture are told exclusively through the eyes of foreigners? Can an outsider really know enough about another culture to tell a complex, realistic narrative about the people they are trying to represent? Too often, the Western world has a disproportionate amount of influence over the narratives of other cultures, causing stories about cultures in Africa and the Eastern world to be overflowing with stereotypes, and offensive portrayals of the people who live there. Western story tellers have the tendency to inaccurately depict foreign cultures to make them fit their own simplified perception of them, and in doing so, further strengthen the power structures already at play in the world. When …show more content…
In A Too-Perfect Picture, author Teju Cole discusses the ways in which western visitors misrepresent the country of India. Because of India’s past colonization by the British, Indians have a long history of the western world imposing power over them. Cole uses the example of Steve