Imagine searching for a character you identify with
and finding only the vague unintelligent versions available, written by writers
totally uninterested in them. As a kid, I remember watching horror movies with
my sister and knowing exactly when the female character will die. In no way was
I an expert in horror movies, but I had seen used so commonly before that I
could guess that woman character, if there was one, would generally die first
or second in the story, often by a fault of her own. Queer men and women
existed in shows as jokes or brief, token characters that would die off an
episode or so later.
For Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, she said she had become
a single story character in the eyes of people who did not know her. When
coming to America, her roommate immediately assumed that Adichie had a tragic
story simply because she had lived in Africa. Adichie said this assumption
wasn’t made out of malice but simply because stories of Africa that are not
centered on starvation or poverty do not reach the public mainstream media. She
said, “the consequence of the single story is this: it robs people of dignity.
It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we
are different rather than how we are similar.” Single stories can dispossess a
people. It can them out to the public eye as unintelligent, as removed of
personal individualistic spirit that connects people to each other, that often
seems to define humanity. But stories can also be used to empower and humanize
people; they can be used to explore people and their individual faults, their
strengths, their dignity and their tragedies. It can make lives of minorities
more known to the public in a way that does not demonize or sexualize their way
of life, but make it as simply another part of the human experience.
I would like to end with Adichie’s powerful words:
“When we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single
story about any place we regain a kind of paradise.”
