"Politics of Fiction" Ted Talk

This woman's name is Elif Shafak. She spoke in a Ted Talk entitled "Politics of Fiction." My favorite part of her speech was the part where she said imagination was the only suitcase she felt she could take with her. For some reason that just caught my attention so quickly. I feel like it is very relatable for many people. For example, someone feeling alone or like an outcast, an imagination is something that no one can take away from them no matter where their life takes them. Kinda similar to how when someone very important to you passes on. That person will still exist in your mind and travel with you wherever you go in that way but is just not physically there. Another part that caught my attention was when she mentioned about being expected to write true stories about herself because she was of a different nationality. She said she was told that she had a good story but they wanted to hear it from her perspective instead of a fictional male perspective of her nationality. She began writing fiction from when she was young. She didn’t think her life was interesting so she started writing about others from a young age instead of having a journal or diary of her own life alike a lot of kids her age at the time. She thinks of her fiction as local and universal. She ties this all back into her beginning topic of circles. She sees fictional stories as related through circles. Shafak related these circles into a personal tie of a story involving her childhood that she remembers about her grandmother.