Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie shares with us “The Danger of a Single Story” in a TedTalk. The danger she says is that “stories matter, many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.” We know as educators that our students carry many stories. It's quite easy to box students in by race, ethnicity or family socio economic level but when we do that we are cheating them and us of so much more. In fact its very easy to box anyone into a single story. With social media if we are not careful it is very tempting to imagine a story from our perspective of what the other person is trying to say.
This instagram project reminded me of that very quickly. As I was posting pictures I was thinking about how my story seemed pretty one sided. Who wouldn’t want to go to the beach, the pool or eat donuts during their summer vacation? My story that I wanted to share is how much fun I have with my children during the summer because once school starts life is so much more structured. However, the other story that you cannot tell from my pictures is what it means to be a mother to me. I was not raised by my mother but instead by my grandmother. Also-my father passed away when I was little. Growing up I had a lot of anger trying to make sense of it all. Thankfully I have moved past much of that anger but my role as a mother is absolutely shaped by what I do not want my own children to experience. There is much more to my pictures than what it appears and I know there is much more to the pictures I see in other feeds as well. We have to remember that because “when we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a type of paradise.”
2 Comments
David
7/27/2015 02:42:35 am
Your Instagram project is already making me mourn for the loss of summer! Great pictures! I should be out in the water too right now but at least your project allowed me a vicarious escape. Thank you for sharing a very touching story about how your own childhood influenced the type of mother you are, which is, I'm sure, the great type!
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12/24/2016 11:36:31 pm
I will instantly grab your rss feed to stay informed of any updates.
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KellyI like people. I love their stories even more. Archives
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