The danger of a single story
Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice — and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.
In Nigeria, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Half of a Yellow Sun has helped inspire new, cross-generational communication about the Biafran war. In this and in her other works, she seeks to instill dignity into the finest details of each character, whether poor, middle class or rich, exposing along the way the deep scars of colonialism in the African landscape.
Adichie’s newest book, The Thing Around Your Neck, is a brilliant collection of stories about Nigerians struggling to cope with a corrupted context in their home country, and about the Nigerian immigrant experience.
Adichie builds on the literary tradition of Igbo literary giant Chinua Achebe—and when she found out that Achebe liked Half of a Yellow Sun, she says she cried for a whole day. What he said about her rings true: “We do not usually associate wisdom with beginners, but here is a new writer endowed with the gift of ancient storytellers.”
“When she turned 10 and read Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, about the clash between Igbo tradition and the British colonial way of life, everything changed: ‘I realized that people who looked like me could live in books.’ She has been writing about Africa ever since.” Washington Post
Would you let your son dive into this pool? Would a story change your mind?
I love visiting waterfalls and creeks and swimming holes in the rainforest.
There is beauty.
There is peace.
But also a sense of activity as the water moves through its environment, trickling or roaring, making music of its own and changing the landscape as it goes.
This was a river, one of many, that we visited on our holiday last month, with all of the beauty and peace and movement.
It is a popular tourist place, with facilities for visitors including beautifully maintained walks and lookouts.
The river runs through huge rocks and the place is actually called “The Boulders”.
At many of the places we had visited before this one, there were swimming “holes” where people were swimming in the rivers, cold though the temperature was at the time, and other places where tour guides showed their clients how to inch across the rocks and slide safely with the water to a pool below.
It’s something that people do.
I have never swum in these water holes, but I like to see the joy and fun that people have who do.
At a lake we visited there were the usual young men daring each other to feats of daring by diving backwards with a somersault into the lake, off a pontoon.
And in watercourses all around the country on any given day, there are children swinging out over lagoons and waterholes on an old tyre attached to a rope and jumping off into the water.
And all around the country, in any given year there will be accidents – people who want that fun, carefree joy and challenge – but who dive into shallow water or land on something submerged in the water. There are people absolutely incapacitated because of such accidents or even worse.
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In many places there are signs, just like this one …
and on the whole, people abide by them.
Not always.
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If I were a young man (or woman, though it seems to be young men who are more tempted), would I abide by them?
If I were a young man’s mother, would I want him to abide by them?
I know the temptation is strong for the fun, carefree joy and challenge, and I know it is not always resisted.
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But at The Boulders, the signs were different.
And here’s where the story comes in.
I had never ever before seen a sign that said “Many people have died here”, and it was repeated on signs throughout the area.
People have died here.
That is a four word story.
I like to think it would have more impact than the standard sign.
If you were a young man (or woman), would you be more likely to abide by the rule?
If you were a young man’s parent or friend, would you be more likely to persuade him?
I would like to think so.
I know as a mother … I would.
I was caught by this thought every time we passed such a sign.
But then when we walked out of the rainforest into the car park, I noticed this plaque on a rock.
Did he dive … and die? Perhaps not, but if the story is that he did,
imagine his mother, his father, his friends, his family, his community and how they felt when he did not return – forever – just because of that daredevil impulse.
That is a heartrending story of a young man who did not live out his life as he could have and whose death must have caused waves and years of anguish.
If you were a young man (or woman), would you be more likely to abide by the rule … knowing that story?
If you were a young man’s parent or friend, would you be more likely to persuade him?
I would like to think so.
I know as a mother … I would.