Feedback from my Professor

Yes, the idea of a single story is fascinating, and the way that Adichie develops the idea is fantastic. Indeed, she gets one to question that dominance of books written about, and by, White people, in particular (and among other points she makes) in ways that allow us to critically interrogate how we identify, and with what we identify, in our readings, experiences, and daily interactions. You raise a point of how to judge issues of representation, and this is what I think: it is one thing to judge the issues of representation (the things that circulate around, that materialize from, what is being or attempting to be represented). It is another thing to look representation in the face and seek to understand the thing, the person, the concern being represented by asking how, why, and for what purposes. Hence, an issue with judging the issue of representation is that oftentimes, we do so in isolation of other people, perspectives, and opinions (thus, a single/singular way of seeing and drawing meaning from the thing we are judging). Maybe it’s not that we are judging representation, but considering the many and varied ways things/people get represented across multiple spectrums, lens, and lived conditions.

You raise an interesting point about not having been able to read multicultural literature from a non-dominant perspective. This, I imagine, is quite difficult to do. I would think that one has to be able to empathize with others (or with constructions of “Othered”), but in ways where one is in conversation—intimate, deep, personal conversations—with others whose experiences are different from our own. And then another thought is, if we are to think about reading from a different racial or ethnic or socioeconomic perspective, is this doable in the absence of difference and diversity? That is, does it become our job to read from an “other” perspective if we do not have the “other’s” perspective present, in the conversation, in dialogue with our own perspective? To take on something different in isolation of the difference (the person, the idea, the multicultural experiences, the various identities and lived conditions) might be to create yet another single and singular story being narrated by a dominant voice.

OK, that’s it for now. These are just some thoughts that came to my mind as I was re-reading your email. Hope they make some sense. See you tomorrow,

VK