Dec 7, 2020
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Singapore
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from China
seen from Canada
seen from Hong Kong SAR China
seen from Malaysia
seen from Guatemala
seen from Singapore
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Mexico
seen from Malaysia
seen from China
seen from Ireland
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Malaysia
seen from Australia
Published in 1956 and used in Virginia classrooms through the late 1970’s, Virginia: History, Government, Geography by Francis B. Simkins an
"I too am just as guilty in the question of the single story. A few years ago, I visited Mexico from the U.S. The political climate in the U.S. at the time was tense, and there were debates going on about immigration. And, as often happens in America, immigration became synonymous with Mexicans. There were endless stories of Mexicans as people who were fleecing the healthcare system, sneaking across the border, being arrested at the border, that sort of thing.
I remember walking around on my first day in Guadalajara, watching the people going to work, rolling up tortillas in the marketplace, smoking, laughing. I remember first feeling slight surprise. And then, I was overwhelmed with shame. I realized that I had been so immersed in the media coverage of Mexicans that they had become one thing in my mind, the abject immigrant. I had bought into the single story of Mexicans and I could not have been more ashamed of myself.
So that is how to create a single story, show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become."
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, "The Danger of a Single Story"
The Master Narrative
In this interview Bill Moyers asks Toni Morrison about the main character in The Bluest Eyes, Peccola.
[9:10]
Toni Morrison: In the stories the characters are placed by me on a cliff. I mean I sort of push them as far as I can to see of what they are made. Bill Moyers: I don’t think I’ve met a more pathetic creature in contemporary literature than Peccola Breedlove in The Bluest Eye. The little girl who wants the blue eyes? Abused by her parents, rejected by her neighbors, ugly, homely, alone, finally descending into madness. It’s been years since I’ve read that novel but I remember her. Morrison: She surrendered completely to the so-called Master Narrative. Moyer: To… Morrison: —the Master Narrative. The whole notion of what is ugliness, what is worthlessness, what is contempt. She got it from her family. From her school. From the movies. She got it from everywhere. Moyer: The master narrative?! That’s life? Morrison: [Politely corrects.] No. It’s white male life. [laughs] The master narrative is whatever ideological script that is being imposed by people of authority on everybody else. The master fiction. History, has a certain point of view.So when these little girls see the most prized gift they can get in this little white doll, that’s the master narrative speaking. “This is beautiful. This is lovely and you’re not it so what are you gonna do about it?” [Morrison chuckling]So if you’ve surrendered to that, as Peecola did, the little girl, the eye of the story, the bridge that is sort of resistant, a little feisty about it, they don’t trust any adult. She is so needful. So completely needful. Has so little, needs so much she becomes the perfect victim, the total, pathetic one. And for her there is no way back into the community and into society. For her, an abused child, she can only escape into fantasy, into madness, which is part of what the mind is always creating and can think that up.