Trackbacks & Pings

1. People of colour are not a story of suffering . . . or resistance. « Restructure! on 29 Oct 2009 at 9:04 am

   [...] Thea Lim at [...]

2. Of Push, Precious, Percival, and “My Pafology” | Racialicious - the intersection of race and pop culture on 10 Nov 2009 at 1:38 pm

   [...] instead talking about systems, and the danger of a single story, the Chimamanda Adichie TED talk Thea posted a little while back. I argued that Lee was angry, and his anger was directed at Perry when it should be directed at the [...]

Comments

1. Cindy wrote:

   Wow! Thank you for that!

   Posted 28 Oct 2009 at 8:31 am ¶

2. Natasha wrote:

   Wonderful video! Thanks for posting , I will pick up one of her books now.

   Posted 28 Oct 2009 at 8:51 am ¶

3. Harlowmonkey wrote:

   Thea, thanks for this post so much! Many of us Asian adoptees who have attempted to get works published have been told the same thing – when our editors for Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption was being shopped around, we heard from a few publishers that they already had a book in process on adoption. Only, in seeing now retrospectively what those books were, they were nothing like our book, which was a critique of international and transracial adoption written by transracial and transnational scholars and artists. These other books were written by white adoptive parents about their story of how they adopted. Different subjects, yes, but also an interesting gatekeeping tool used by the publishers to promote one narrative (white parents) at the expense of those who actually live it (adult transracial adoptees).

   Posted 28 Oct 2009 at 9:29 am ¶

4. Anna wrote:

   Adichie is amazing. I really do hope folks are inspired to buy her books; this wonderful talk reveals her nuanced sense of narrative, voice, and place.

   (I wrote a little bit about Adichie here: http://isak.typepad.com/isak/2006/10/interview_chima.html and here: http://isak.typepad.com/isak/2009/10/the-danger-of-a-single-story.html)

   Posted 28 Oct 2009 at 9:41 am ¶

5. dersk wrote:

   I highly highly highly recommend the entire TEDTalks series – they generally get people who are doing really interesting stuff to talk about it. Very good brain food.

   @Thea: Regarding the Daily Show: A Jew, a Canadian woman, a Brit, 2 white guys, I’m not sure what Aasif Mandvi’s background is, two black guys and a Black (Lewis). That seems pretty darn diverse to me.

   @Harlowmonkey: did the publishers ever give you examples of books on ’specialty topics’ that cannibalized each others sales, or any reasoning other than “we’re already doing one?” It’s kind of strange, given that you often see a spate of biographies about a particular figure (Franklin is the most recent example I can remember offhand). On the assumption that publishers are more driven by revenue than by ideology, maybe the most effective strategy would be to collect info showing that ’specialty topic’ books can reinforce each other?

   Posted 28 Oct 2009 at 10:10 am ¶

6. Thea Lim wrote:

   @ dersk

   Your categorisation of Daily Show cast members is a little odd: only half of them get to have a gender AND an ethnicity or nationality. What is the difference between two black guys and a Black? Aasif Mandvi is South Asian.

   As well what I said about the Daily Show was that it had only two black cast members, and they were both men. That doesn’t contradict your numbers.

   How do you define “speciality topic”? Some people might find that category offensive. It implies that some lives are not special – ie regular, normal – and other lives are (ie irregular, abnormal). While a book about transracial adoption may seem like a “speciality topic” to you, to a great number of people it is a daily lived experience that is quite normal. I also don’t know why the onus should be on Harlowmonkey – you don’t hear that Cormac McCarthy had to convince his publisher to release his dystopic novel The Road based on the success of Brave New World.

   Posted 28 Oct 2009 at 10:27 am ¶

7. Anna wrote:

   Just FYI: I think when @dersk said “two black guys and a Black,” she was making a joke–”Black” being a reference to the comedian Lewis Black who appears regularly on the show.

   Posted 28 Oct 2009 at 10:39 am ¶

8. dersk wrote:

   @Thea: thought that would be clear – just a bit of wordplay since Lewis Black (who’s white) is one of their correspondents.

   Perhaps it wasn’t your intent, but I inferred that you were saying that the Daily Show doesn’t have a diverse cast, so I was listing all the facets that weren’t white, male, or American (I was guessing that Mandvi’s background was Indian but didn’t want to assume). So you’re complaining that only 22% of the on camera staff is African American?

   By the way, I put specialty topic in quotes because it’s basically whatever the publisher says it is! I completely agree with you that specialty is in the eye of the beholder, in this case the publisher. And of course it’s the writer’s job to persuade a publisher to invest in the book – almost all publishing houses are for-profit enterprises, after all. I’m trying to come up with ways of persuading publishers that their thinking may not be correct, is all.

   Posted 28 Oct 2009 at 10:56 am ¶

9. Deaf Indian Muslim Anarchist wrote:

   Exactly.

   I get really annoyed when people tell me that “sorry, honey, Taqwacores was already written” when they learn that I’ve been working on my novel about a Muslim punk rocker.

   my only reponse: STFU and it’s NOT the same as Taqwacores.

   Posted 28 Oct 2009 at 11:10 am ¶

10. Miss V wrote:

    That was really amazing! Thank you for sharing. Really gave you a lot to think about.

    As an avid Daily Show fan though, I have to throw my hat in with the people who aren’t agreeing with you on that.

    The Daily Show has a regular cast of about 8 people, including Jon. All are diverse in some way. They are also not “characters”. They are not created for the show. They’re comedians who have auditioned and gotten spots through their success.

    Not to mention that Wyatt Cenac is one of the most commonly reoccuring members of the show right now.

    I think it’s unfair to judge a talkshow-type program with other shows…because you honestly have one or two people running the whole thing and everyone else frequents or is a guest.

    But I’m with you on other series. I’m a huge gossip girl fan because i’m shallow like that, but I can’t help but notice that there are only three minorities in the entire regular cast and two of them are tertiary characters and the other is a hypocritical bleeding heart with no money and lives in Brooklyn.

    Aaanyway, off topicness aside. I really did enjoy that. She’s a brilliant beautiful woman.

    Posted 28 Oct 2009 at 11:12 am ¶

11. dersk wrote:

    @Anna: I’m XY, actually. It’s a nickname from college when the government misspelled my name on a Pell Grant.

    Oh, and there was another TED talk a few weeks ago by an African kid who checked a book on electricity out of the library and hacked together a functional windmill generator out of that knowledge. His story – and the warmth with which is was received – really made me choke up a bit.

    Posted 28 Oct 2009 at 11:25 am ¶

12. dersk wrote:

    @DIMA – Hey, The Taqwacores sounds pretty cool; I hadn’t heard of it before. Is it any good?

    Posted 28 Oct 2009 at 11:31 am ¶

13. Ike wrote:

    @ Comment 11:

    You’re talking about William Kamkwamba of Malawi, who now also has a non-profit called Moving Windmills. He’s awesome – he came to speak at my college earlier this month!

    Posted 28 Oct 2009 at 12:54 pm ¶

14. Slush wrote:

    That was a wonderful talk. It was kind of like listening to a Racialicious manifesto. I have already sent it to many people.

    On the Daily Show side discussion, I think there is a strong tendency among Daily Show fans to defend the show against any and all criticism, because so much of it is good and progressive and just needed in the public sphere. Being a great show doesn’t make it flawless, and to me, it is very strongly dominated by the white american male norm., notwithstanding a couple people of color being involved here and there. Especially the male part is very dominating, but also the whiteness. A particularly good example is the people brought on as guests, a much bigger sample size than the small number of regulars – and overwhelmingly white men.

    That doesn’t make it bad, per se. It doesn’t take away from its cleverness, its funniness, its incisiveness. It just is what it is, and it’s not everything. Like Achebie was talking about, it’s one story.

    Posted 28 Oct 2009 at 4:01 pm ¶

15. ms four wrote:

    I can’t watch the video now (world series is on in my house), but Adichie is amazing! If you haven’t read her novel Half a Yellow Sun, run, don’t walk, to your library and pick it up. It’s amazing.

    Posted 28 Oct 2009 at 10:13 pm ¶

16. dersk wrote:

    @Slush: I don’t want blindly to defend the show, but I think facts matter. In a cast of nine people, three are white male Americans.

    I’d agree that the guests probably tend towards white American males, but that’s more a reflection of the power structure in the US than their show.

    Posted 29 Oct 2009 at 4:49 am ¶

17. Ain't I an African? wrote:

    Thank you. Chimamanda expresses so articulately what I always think when I see, read or hear most North American or European stories about my continent. They are typically one story- poverty, disease, the need for rescue by a benevolent white person.

    Posted 29 Oct 2009 at 7:24 am ¶

18. Jamerican Muslimah wrote:

    I concur! Thanks for posting this!

    Posted 29 Oct 2009 at 2:12 pm ¶

19. Slush wrote:

    @dersk, yes, facts matter, but how does Jon Stewart, John Oliver, John Hodgman, Lewis Black, and Jason Jones add up to only three white men? And how do you ever get past the total gender imbalance?

    Also, I respectfully totally disagree about the guests. It is a reflection of the US power structure, yes, but the show doesn’t challenge this because they hardly ever present other voices. It’s flatly untrue that other voices aren’t available.

    I’m not saying the show has to do that in order to be any good, I’m just not going to give them any credit for failing at it.

    One could argue that the Daily Show is one of the contributors to the single dominant story of what gets to be mainstream humor in America – a largely male and white story, which occasional POCs for extra color. Pun intended.

    But I don’t mean to blame that on the Daily Show. I’m not trying to say it’s their fault. But they do still play into it. They’re hardly pushing the envelope, is what I’m saying.

    Posted 29 Oct 2009 at 4:39 pm ¶

20. rebecca wrote:

    as someone who works in an indie bookstore i often wish more publishers would turn down stories of white middle class family struggle on the grounds of “already been done.” (there’s been a mini-trend of “demise of the WASP” books in recent months – some of them worth reading.)

    customers often come in asking for recommendations for their book club – i’m a bit embarrassed to admit that i often recommend “half of a yellow sun” partly on the grounds that they’re unlikely to have read any novel set in nigeria before – because i often get a response along the lines of “we’re sick of reading about india/china/afghanistan” – i wonder if this has to do with a similarity between the types of novels that get published concerning any of the above countries.

    Posted 29 Oct 2009 at 10:43 pm ¶

21. Luis wrote:

    I can listen to her speak all day.

    I’ve been trying to make that point for ages, and she summarized it so well. It’s a catchy phrase, “single story,” and really can be employed in so many different cases.

    Posted 30 Oct 2009 at 12:12 am ¶

22. Ain't I an African wrote:

    More on the single story – this article by writer Binyavanga Wainaina “How to write about Africa.” http://www.granta.com/Magazine/92/How-to-Write-about-Africa/Page-1

    Posted 01 Nov 2009 at 2:35 am ¶

23. mimi wrote:

    Thank you for posting this. As a black American writer, I, too, have been slimed by the single story. I so needed to be uplifted in what has been a very low artistic point in my life. Listening to this speech and reading your comments, were just what I needed. I have bookmarked your blog and will be reading it as often as you publish.
    Thanks again!

    Posted 16 Nov 2009 at 11:58 am ¶