Dec 102009
A friend shared this TED Talk from Chimamanda Adichie with me and I was deeply moved by some of the ideas the speaker discussed. While I would like to let the video speak for itself, I encourage viewers to consider the potential impact that a single, homogeneous narrative of Islam and the “Islamic world” (originating in Western literature and perpetuated through mass-media discourse) has had in shaping our attitudes and perceptions of the many heterogeneous cultures and traditions encompassed within Islam. I hope that this video will provide a springboard for fruitful discussion on this topic. Enjoy!
I appreciate how Chiamanda includes herself in the discusion. None of us are immune from creating a “single story” in our minds.
This reminds me of a book I read last year soon after I’d come back from the West Bank; Amira Hass’ “Reporting From Ramallah.” She writes, “The only Israelis this generation of Palestinians know are soldiers and settlers. For them, Israel is no more than a subsidiary of an army that knows no limits and settlements that know no borders.”
This is precisely the danger of a “single story;” a danger in which I also was not immune while in the Middle East, since all I knew of Israelis were from my Palestinian friends.
Amira Hass is a brilliant example, however, of someone wanting to know more stories. The daughter of Holocaust survivors, she is the only Jewish Israeli correspondent on Palestinian Affairs, living among the people about whom she reports, who I believe, was trying to escape “the danger of a single story.”