SINGLE STORY OF BISOLA I’d began with the definition of a story. It’s a message that tells the particulars of an act or occurrence or person or course of events presented in writing or drama or cinema or as a radio or television program. Stories can be told in many ways though. “the single story is defined as : showing a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again and that’s what they become.” In my view, I’ll say, single story is a one-dimensional and single perspective way of telling a story of a person, people and other things. I’d known Bisola for more than two years now. She was an ideal definition and real example of beauty. A paragon of beauty. She’d a bulgy dark set of eyes, which often attracted people alongside her physical attributes. Her uniformly dark skinned coloration, fleshy and meaty physique and an intermediate height glowed a young lady with a honed look. People often said she was unfriendly, wild, mean and unapproachable. She was tagged with ego, pride and self-centeredness. They said she was opportunist. They knew nothing about her except for her name- Bisola. Some said she had once snubbed them. Others said she was cruel and wicked, many others were upset about her being introverted and basically, hardened. She was never easy, An Oppurtunist. they concluded. This was the single story about her. They saw her as only one thing- An opportunist, over and over again. They’d a single view, single impression, single perspective, they were rationalized in one dimension, and that’s what she’d become. Meanwhile, I’d keenly studied her. She had good friends, close, sweet and best friends. Friends she could rely on, hang on, bank and hope on. She laughed, cheered and was very happy with them. She attended their invited birthday parties and fun nights. Some people joked with her, as she did in return. There were people she was fun to also. She was also a source opportunity to other folks. “It is impossible to talk about the single story without talking about power. There is a word called ‘NKALI’ which loosely translates to ‘to be greater’. Stories are defined by the principle of NKALI. How they are told, who tells them, when they are told, how many stories are told, are really dependent on power.” Stories about bisola were dependent on power. The caliber of people that told them. People with power have influence, they’d influenced these stories. Most of her stories were told via gossip. Some in open, others in whatever way. The people who told them also mattered. So many stories, different and similar, in whatever form were single stories about her because they conveyed just one meaning- Negativity. Most of her stories were even told before a person got to know her, it was often when they were told. “Power is the ability, not just to tell the story of another person but to make the definitive story of that person” The definitive story, the classic story about bisola was often negative. A negativity that termed her an Oppurtunist. Power had been incurred to make a true and definitive story about her. “If you want to dispossess a person, the simplest way to do it is to start their story with secondly. Start their story with their failures, and you would have an entirely different story” People had tried to dispossess her with their stories. stories spiced with negativity and sentence. They only told her second story, her one story, her single story and this formed entirely, a different story about who she truly was. “The single story creates stereotypes and the problem with stereotypes, is that, they are not untrue, but they are incomplete. They make one story become the other story” Stereotype is a conventional or formulaic conception or image. The single story about her had created just one type of image- an image of an oppurtunist, a stereotype of veto, a convection and conception of negativity. Basically, what people said about her wasn’t really untrue but they had made it her only story, an incomplete story. “The consequence of a single story is that it rubs people of their dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. it emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar.” The aftermath of bisola’s single story is this, it rubbed her real person. It frictioned who she was, her self-esteem, worthiness and respect. These stories made her different; and it made her credit and acknowledgement stern. It punctuated how different she was rather than how alike she was with other people. “What if we had an African television network that broadcast diverse African stories all over the world?” What if they knew she had other lovely friends? What if they knew she could rely, hope, and bank on people? What if they knew she attended invited birthday parties and fun nights? What if people knew she was funny, cheerful and jokey? What the late Nigerian Writer, Chinua Achebe calls ‘a balance of stories’. “Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to marline but stories can be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a person; but stories can be used to repair that broken dignity.” Bisola had a one story, a single story. Many stories, different stories weren’t told about her. The story had an effect on her dignity. It bankrupted her self-esteem and breached her worthiness. But if many stories, different stories, other stories are told about her, it would restore, mend, repair that broken respect. It would endow and indue it. “That when we reject the single story, when we realize that there is no single story of a person, we regain a kind of paradise” Finally, if only they could disdain, reject and refuse the single story about bisola, if they actualize that there is no such thing as a single story about her, they will recover a sort of Eden with her. All quotes extracted from “Dangers of a single story” by Chimamanda Adichie on TEDTALKS, OXFORD ENGLAND, July 2009. From d pen of: Edoziem cV Chisom
Posted on: Mon, 22 Jul 2013 11:02:23 +0000