Chimamanda+Ngozi+Adichie+-+The+danger+of+a+single+story

media type="custom" key="24034302" i chose this video to share because i appreciated chimamanda's recognition of how hearing only one side of a story can be detrimental to people and human lives. one point that really resonated with me was her story about fedi, the "poor" house boy that worked for her family and how her mother had crafted this mono-tale of his family and the poverty they lived in. chimamanda spoke about feeling "enormous pity" for the boy and his family and how this feeling of pity had restricted (maybe even erased) the agency and resiliency that his family possessed. she had only understood them to be "poor" and was "startled" when she came across the colorful basket that fedi's brother had made because, as she said, "it had not occurred to me that anybody in his family could actually //make// something." she goes on to weave other stories into her presentation as well: her travel to mexico after only hearing u.s. mainstream discourse regarding immigration; her experience with her university roommate who had only understood africans to be tribal, not familiar with technology, and different; and her experience of being "african" in an ethnocentric, western nation. she ends her talk by acknowledging that presenting only a single story "robs people of their dignity" and "flattens their experience." she advocates that storytellers should strive to engage all the stories about a place or a person rather than only one story about a place or a person.

for me, chimamanda's stories incited me to check my privilege. being a qualitative researcher and sharing the stories of my participants, i feel, puts me in a position of privilege, even if the only privilege is the institutional backing i have for conducting my research. i want to resist the urge to only present one clear comprehensible story in which there is a "beginning," some middle stuff, an "end," and nothing more. because i know that stories can change from day to day, minute to minute. i want to resist the urge to feel pity for any person or place, because i do not want to restrict anyone's agency or erase it. this is all pity does, i feel. it clouds our vision and our ability to recognize resistance and perseverance despite horrible conditions and circumstances. i want to resist the urge to read any people through the lens of dominant discourses or ideology, because i know what this has meant for marginalized groups of people and it is not good. in the 18 minutes and some seconds of this video, i feel like i grappled with all of these issues. in all my desires to resist these urges, how could i ever come to a place where i feel confident about the words that i put on paper? i never do. but i think that this is a good thing. a very good thing. i will still commit my words to paper, but it is my uncertainty, i believe, that will allow others to interject and intervene themselves into the stories that i have told. i think that this uncertainty may be the space for them to exert their own agency and this is truly my desire.

Acidly, C.N.. (2009, July). Chimamanda Ngozi Acidly: The danger of a single story [Video File]. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html