A single story is having only one idea of a place, an event, or a group of people. The metaphor for it is reading a book on something and believing that it can only be that way. This happens because in books or media things are viewed in one major perspective instead of showing other perspectives in order to show the whole truth of the place or group of people. Most of the books that were read to me when I was a kid were books that had animals as the main character. Books like “Chrysanthemum”, Franklin the Turtle series, The Berenstain Bears, and” If You Give a Mouse a Cookie”, which played into a part that I didn’t identify the characters to real life because I knew the characters were acting human-like instead of how they act in real life. The plots were always having a self-esteem issue or losing something and getting resolved at the end. I guess the single story that I absorbed was that books were always imaginative. I believe they were not guilty in making me believe that a group of people were a certain way because it wasn’t portrayed by any humans. I think modern technology definitely plays a part in a single story because like mentioned in the TEDTalk when one searches up Africa it shows nice landscapes and people starving, rarely can find people who have established homes and are not starving with one Google search of Africa. Also, the stereotype roles that played in movies and tv shows for each race plays into a single story. Seeing the same races acting the same way in each movie makes it feel like all people in that race are like that. These two pieces are speaking about overlapping issues because Mohamed was facing the reality of a single story that people with that name only look a certain way and can’t have blue eyes or look like a white man.
Bonus: The story surrounding my name is that although my name starts with a Y, it is supposed to be pronounced with a J because in the Spanish language Y’s have J sounds sometimes. So many times I have just allowed my name to be mispronounced because it is just easier than having to explain.
I’ve read some of the books that you mentioned and I didn’t really create A single story out of those books because they didn’t really have much meaning to anything in particular. I agree that those books aren’t at fault for the way that I portrayed a group of people or individuals and they mostly say that technology contributed highly to the single-stories I made. Also, I like the way that you mentioned how we believe in some single stories such as the one mentioned in the Ted talk video about Africa and how we picture it to be starving people, etc and I think we can all relate to that to a certain extent.
Hi Yailene (+ Deisi), I find your childhood samples interesting in that you make a point regarding children’s animal content. Using animals wipes any sense of obvious human identity-based tension. I do encourage you, though, to think about books you may have read in middle or high school. The canonical literature that most of us read in English classes throughout grade school greatly represents the single story. Also, I love your explaining the Y-J sounds from English to Spanish, a fun way to tie in a cultural lesson! Overall, solid analysis!