“Today, the balance of stories” (Achebe, 2000)

The twentieth century for all its many faults did witness a significant beginning, in Africa and elsewhere in the so called Third World, of the process of ‘restorying’ peoples who had been knocked silent by the trauma of all kinds of dispossession.

…in the final reckoning the people who will advance the universal conversation will not be copycats but those able to bring hiterto untold stories, along with new ways of telling.

After a short period of dormancy and a little self-doubt about its erstwhile imperial mission, the West may be ready to resume its old domineering monologue in the world. Certainly there is no lack of zealots urging it to do so. They call it ‘taking a hard look’ at things. The result is a hardening of views on such issues as the African slave trade and the European colonization of Africa, with the result, generally, of absolving Europe from much of the blame and placing it squarely on African shoulders.

Despite the significant changes that have taken place in the last four or five decades, the wound of the centuries is still a long way from healing. And I believe that the curative power of stories can move the process forward.

Achebe, Chinua. 2000. Today, the balance of stories. In Home and Exile, Anchor Books: New York. p. 79; 83.

Left: 1936 illustration of European “conquest” of the totality of Africa (The Greenwood Commonwealth, May 9, 1936) Right: Map of Africa in 1939, Amitchell125 based on Richard Overy, Wikipedia)

Showing what “belongs” to England, Holland and Denmark in 1736

In a nutshell, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “The danger of a single story” revolves around the idea that stories have power to influence who we believe we are, and who we can become. They can create a positive identity or a negative identity. The stories told about Africans by Europeans and later, Americans, from the beginning and up until now, presented a single story. As Achebe mentioned, as more African writers began to write their own stories, the stories of their experience, and now as African American and others in the African Diaspora do so as well, it brings an opportunity to explore new stories across a broad perspective to widen the breadth and depth of the conversation. Adichie (whom my students introduced to me) is an eloquent speaker who gives TED talks, and also writes. Her proposal is that when we reject the single story, it can heal, not just individuals, but communities.

None of us is immune to bias. We cannot not have them. What we can do is examine them honestly and engage in hearing and learning from others about who they are and who they want to be. Two final things come to mind as I wrap up this series:

"...eager though we were to get rid of white rule, we did not find it necessary to demonise [sic] white people--at least not at that stage.  And the reason, I think, is that we were ignorant of the hundreds of years of sustained denigration we and our home had been subject to in order to make our colonization possible and excusable. (Chinua Achebe, 2000, "My Home Under Imperial Fire" in Home and Exile, p. 33)

I remember one of my most brilliant students, who was at the time working on her third college degree, and I remarked on her journey.  She shared the story of working in a factory after graduation from high school, and seeing a former teacher who asked her why she was not in college.  The student had replied, "I'm not college material."  The teacher replied, "You may not BE college material, but you can BECOME college material."

And that my friends, is the danger of a single story.