The Danger of the Single Story

Freakin’ epic thing to post. So great. Something I have been thinking alot about lately.

Great presentation, it’s one good reason to read many travel writings before making your mind up if you like a place or not before visiting yourself.

Wow! Great link!

What an incredible speech. How true and what a way to present it. Thank you so much for sharing this.

For a very long time I did the same thing. So this piece struck close to home. I love reading Chimamanda Adichie. If you haven’t read her short stories, try them … http://www.l3.ulg.ac.be/adichie/

Agreed – I started reading American and British book at 8 and started writing around 11. For the longest time the characters in my head looked and lived like the characters I read. Great article.

What a truly honest perception…a beautiful reminder to us all to look beneath the surface & examine our views.

To answer the question asked at the end of the article…

I have been privileged to grow up as part of several cultures. I am an American, but my parents are from the former Yugoslavia so I identify strongly with my roots, as well as the ‘immigrant culture’ of the United States.

I won’t say much about the first, because I am sure many people know of the wealth of literature out there sharing the diverse amount of stories that fall under that category.

As for the former Yugoslavia, much of the literature (as well as the films, news, etc) that reaches other places is of the single-story variety. The focus is primarily on war, conflict, turmoil, bloodshed…to those that have never been there, the entire region is a war-torn land, full of nothing but poor peasants. I brought a friend to Serbia with me a few years ago, and he was astonished to see that there are cities full of fashionable people laughing in cafes all over the streets, sharing their lives. The street festivals & celebrations of life, the juxtaposition of Balkan Beatboxers & breakdancers next to Megadeth concert posters, the gardens in front of each home full of roses were all unexpected based on the single story.

The single stories leave out the strength of these people, the story that while there is struggle, they struggle to survive just like anywhere else, which makes them survivors. Conflict does not diminish them as a people – it makes them grow stronger. While there are old women in babushkas selling flowers on the street, there are also people who prefer a simpler ‘peasant’ life of growing food on the earth & raising families. They leave out the life-force of the gypsy kids running around time trying to think of clever ways to get your spare change. These stories neglect the fact that none of these people are the ones making the bombs that have been dropped on this land.

The American-Immigrant is also portrayed in a certain light. While the struggle of immigrants to make a new life in America can be very real, there is so much more to it than being a refuge escaping from the terrors of somewhere far away & working in slaughterhouses & factories to make it. The true stories are not ones of pity, they are ones of courage, bravery, sacrifice and triumph.

The best stories of these I learned by spending a decade in NYC asking taxi cab drivers about their second lives – the families they left behind & were sending money to, the degrees & places of recognition they held in their homelands before coming to America & having to start again from a lower position because in this country, many of their degrees & positions were deemed worthless.

I also learned how important the viewpoint of the person reading or hearing the story is in relation to all this. I had a friend of a friend ask me if she could do her masters thesis on me. She wanted to learn about a 1st generation American & what it was like to be brought up in 2 cultures. I was pleased to share with her, but was very disappointed when the things she chose to pick from my family stories resulted in a paper that made it all sound so very stereotypical & sad and maybe even sort of pathetic. She had left out much of the joy & beauty of my upbringing, the depth that all this mixing of cultures provided me. Maybe it was because she couldn’t get past the single stories she had been reading her whole life. I’m not sure, but it sure made me feel really strange.

I’m subscribed to TEDtalksDirector on YouTube – the most enlightening things. They post a talk from past conferences on most week It’s fascinating. Even the ones that I don’t think I’ll like teach me more than an average day of school.

What a great way to talk about stereotypes and how to defeat them. Fighting the single story and finding a balanced story is what we travelers aim to do when we are abroad. It’s also what I do in my job, working in export, and I am always amazed at how non travelers view the world.
Views about China have changed over the last decade, but still few Westerners realize that Singapore has the best health standards in the world and that South East Asia is in many ways more ecologically advanced than Europe. It’s hard to make the colonial/thirld world single stories go away.

I have been thinking about this alot. It nags at me, really. I am African-American. I am not a typical “black girl” I can’t really be characterized or put on a box. I’m weird, completely outside the stereotype, but my stereotype may also be “act like I’m white”. I grew up in a middle class family, went to great schools, have two degrees (after this I may work on getting a masters in writing ), have a white husband (who looks white but is basically a mixture of everything under the sun but people want to characterize him so that’s what he is, white). All the time growing up white people were shocked that I didn’t listen to hip hop, that I would rather listen to Smashing Pumpkins, Ani Difranco, Led Zepplin, and Prince (which is okay because he’s black). While the black people called me oreo cookies and made fun of me for the way I talked, or that I was willing to hang out with anybody, not just black people. When I went to London for spring vacation, or to china to study people of all different countries thought that African Americans lived in ghettos and had guns. Going to university and studying women’s studies I had to take women’s lit where the only black novels that were read were about slavery or passing, and being the only black person in the class I was supposed to know about this experience and I don’t. To this day I still have people who apologize for slavery, that there is a possiblity that their ancestors may have been my master and I have no idea what they are talking about, and I think that’s a bit insane to carry that guilt for something you had nothing to do with. I read Toni Morrison, Richard Wright, Alice Walker, August Wilson, they’re all great but they are no reflection of how I feel, but those stories should not be forgotten. I majored in theatre in college where the parts I got were a grandmother of a southern boy who was arrested in the deep south in the time of discrimination in Lesson Before Dying. I was told I should want to be the black maid in Cat in A hot tin Roof when I refused to audition, I was told that if they were casting it in Broadway it would be an honor if I got cast. Psh, please, so no, I will never be in a Tennessee Williams play and get to play those classic roles. Instead, i get to look forward to race plays and stories of discrimination and talking like an old southern woman, or going into an audition and using the same monologue as every other black girl who is auditioning and uses something from Fences or Raison in the Sun. I don’t want to be in color girls when the rainbow isn’t enough, I don’t want to be in an Alice Childress play (even though I do love her!), and god willing I DO NOT want to be in a Tyler Perry revival menstrul show (I might as well wear black face and dance around doing a tap dance). So for the theatre world that’s out. In books I look forward to what? Push (made into the movie precious)? It seems as though all of us in America have been sexually abused, molested, pregnant at 16, doing drugs, been in a domestic violence situation where our daddy’s hit us. COME ON! No, I am not saying that it doesn’t happen, BUT THAT IS NOT OUR ONLY STORY. and i will speak for other races too. I only know of Asian people from Amy Tan’s stories like the Joy Luck club (not really, but if I didn’t have Asian best friends or lived in China that may be all I know), I only know native American people through being spirtually tied with the earth, dancing around fires with feathers and/or being alcoholics from popular tv culture (which is a shame because my grandmother was Native American and I don’t think she danced around a fire…), I only know the Mexican story to be…well immigration I guess…, so yeah a lot of other cultures have it a whole lot worse I suppose.
so in conclusion, to answer your question, no my race is not accurately depicted in literature. There are no Alice in Wonderland, no Wizard’s of Oz, no Steinbecks, no Catcher in the Rye, no Great Gatsby, no Atlas Shrugged, no Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay’s, no Shakespeare, no Tennessee Williams, no Harry Potters, no Anne Rice Vampire novels (because I love vampires), no Cinderella (but we do have the Frog Princess now where we can turn into gross reptiles, we should be grateful), no Snow white, no Jack in the Bean Stalk, no Virginia Wolfe, no Jane austin, no Anna Karenina, you get my point. but we do have to look forward to is the pain, and the fact that we can overcome. Sometimes, I just want to pretend and live in a story that is far from reality and is fun where my face is one of the characters.
Sorry for the ramble, but it feels good to get it out.

I had seen this talk by Adichie a while back. I was absolutely
touched by it. Infact I have started a community inspired by her talk
that aims at breaking stereotypes based on race, religion or
nationality. If anyone of you will like to join the community please
feel free to do so. Lets contribute together and find a way to tackle
this complex issue. Here is a link to the community. Feel free to join.

http://dangerofasinglestory.ning.com/

I had seen this talk by Adichie a while back. I was absolutely
touched by it. Infact I have started a community inspired by her talk
that aims at breaking stereotypes based on race, religion or
nationality. If anyone of you will like to join the community please
feel free to do so. Lets contribute together and find a way to tackle
this complex issue. Here is a link to the community. Feel free to join.

http://dangerofasinglestory.ning.com/

I had seen this talk by Adichie a while back. I was absolutely
touched by it. Infact I have started a community inspired by her talk
that aims at breaking stereotypes based on race, religion or
nationality. If anyone of you will like to join the community please
feel free to do so. Lets contribute together and find a way to tackle
this complex issue. Here is a link to the community. Feel free to join.

http://dangerofasinglestory.ning.com/

I had seen this talk by Adichie a while back. I was absolutely
touched by it. Infact I have started a community inspired by her talk
that aims at breaking stereotypes based on race, religion or
nationality. If anyone of you will like to join the community please
feel free to do so. Lets contribute together and find a way to tackle
this complex issue. Here is a link to the community. Feel free to join.

http://dangerofasinglestory.ning.com/