Danger of a Single Story Response

1.       Single stories are dangerous in many ways; this word is accurate, but really a single story in itself of what single stories can do.  Single stories are pervasive.  They spread like epidemic diseases, giving incomplete perspectives about a group to myriad people.  Single stories are insidious.  When they are told, they have truth, and this makes them seem harmless.  This makes them told more and more often because their simplicity and the categorization they offer is desired.  They give truth, but an understanding of a people or group that is false.  In doing so, they diminish the dignity of a group of people hindered in pursuing an identity they seek to project.  Single stories are crippling to the individual.  People around them think of them in a one, distinct fashion, and this burdens them from being themselves.  They want people to know them, but with the single story, they do not.  Single stories are polarizing.  They make one people distinctly different, and focus on these rather than numerous similarities between people which would serve to bring them together.

3.       As Chimamanda Adichie says, power is closely tied with the idea of a single story, and what single stories are told.  She uses the Igbo word nkali, which loosely translates to "to be greater than another," to describe the concept to listeners.  If who is in power is the storyteller, than those who do not have power -- because they are in the minority, because they are oppressed because of beliefs, or because they are simply perceived as distinctly different -- do not have their stories told.  American history is almost always told from the perspective of the white colonists because they had the power: they were the people who conquered and progressed with advanced technology, and the idea that they were superior to the Native Americans already there because of their vastly different societies, which made these Europeans view their ways as "savage."  Yet if the story is told from the Native Americans, whose stories were not told because they did not play a role in the development of the American state, but were pushed aside with intolerance and disregard to the oblivion of posterity, the complete story would change.  We would see incredibly complex societies torn apart because of power.  Today, voices of whites are elevated by their greater number and American tradition of institutionalized oppression against people of color, and especially, black people.  Their stories are told and told in greater number because of opportunities which arise from power.

5.       As a writer, Chinua Achebe is conquering the idea of the single story by showing the complex, sophisticated Igbo society in Umuofia of Nigeria.  American readers who have the idea that Africa is a one-dimensional place of violence have their views and projections of the world altered by Achebe's writing.  He shows that Africa is a place of extreme diversity, in which different countries have very different stories, by presenting a very unique culture and society in Nigeria.  Furthermore, he puts readers into sorts of intellectual traps by making readers draw conclusions about Igbo society as a whole solely by Okonkwo's perspective.  This is a single story about men in society, and he shows this to us by later offering other perspectives.  An example of the integration of the idea of the single story into Things Fall Apart is in the men's discussion of varying gender relations.  They see that their idea of how genders should interact is not the same as those in other villages.  Overall, the destroying of single stories in the readers' minds plays into the terrible impact of British colonialism.

Rabbit-Proof Fence Responses

3.       The idea of a home is central to an individual's identity.  A home often has your family, has memories and experiences of yours, and has love, safety, and comfort, all of which foster the preservation and development of your identity.  This identity gives you strength in yourself and a sense of belonging in the world.  When you are deprived of your home and all that comes with it, you lose a sense of dignity.  This is the story of what happened to the main characters Molly, Gracie, and Daisy in the movie Rabbit-Proof Fence.  Because they were forced away from Jigalong, their home and place of Aborigine culture, to assimilate into white, Australian-British society as half-castes in the Moore River Settlement, they almost immediately attempted to escape.  Molly led the charge to go home, with dogged determination and perseverance to continue that was motivated by her quiet dignity.  She refused to let Mr. Neville and his people take away the sense of self that she, her sister Daisy, and her cousin Gracie all had.  Throughout the long journey, and even when Daisy cannot walk, the group continues onward, seeking redemption against the whites who interned them and pursuing the sanctuary of home.  Tracker Moodoo shows his pride in the will of these girls when he says his only line of the film: "She's pretty clever that girl; she wants to go home."  This statement shows to us the admirable quality of perseverance against adversity to maintain one's identity through home.

6.       Talking embodies spirit and livelihood.  Talking establishes power and influence; those with a voice are those who win in society.  It is in this way that silence is a theme in colonialism, and how it was used in the film to illustrate this idea.  Those with voice and power were the British, and those who had their voices taken away were the Aborigine.  Much of the speaking in the film is done by British colonial authority imposing their will on Aborigine people.  Silence, too, shows the lack of transparency about the evils of the colonial process.  Colonialism rapidly and quietly forces native peoples to comply with invaders.  A lack of dialogue could present the idea that colonialism, as it happens so abruptly, gives words, and in turn, the individuals who speak them, minimal staying power.  But at the end of the movie, when Molly and Daisy's mother, grandmother, and other Aborigines are chanting, a shift in silence to words indicates a power shift to the Aborigines in maintaining their identities.

7.       The namesake for the movie Rabbit-Proof Fence is very powerful.  The fence is both a symbol for the preservation of identity and the love and security of home, in addition to resilience of characters against British colonialism and their coercive assimilation of Aborigine peoples.  When Molly comes into contact with a person on their escape route, she asks them the direction of the Rabbit-Proof fence.  We can tell that this serves as a sort of destination for the girls when we can see their palpable happiness when they reach it.  They know that the fence runs all the way to their home, a place they associate with love and safety.  The fence also serves as a symbol for resistance against British colonialism and the preservation of Aborigine identity and ideals.  The rabbits can symbolize invading British colonists to an already established Aborigine world -- they are stopped by the resilience of the fence of Molly, Daisy, and Gracie.  Yet the fence could also, earlier in the film, symbolize Mr. A. O. Neville's resistance to Aborigine people and his ideas.  He fences in Aborigine culture in an attempt to "Britainize" it.  However, the prevailing image is certainly one of Aborigine toil to maintain their home against adversity from those attempting to strip them of it.  The fence in the movie conveys the conflicting tensions of colonialism -- resistance, assimilation, preservation, and protection.

Poems

My Blood ~

My blood is my home
My blood is my fam
My blood is Jewish tolerance and pursuit of happiness
My blood is Catholic toil and boogeying...
It's Grandfather gettin down like Frankenstein
Gets better as you sip it, so much like fine wine
Children who love, parents who care
Tyson looking me down with a stare
The Gunners the Raiders the Wiz and the Hoos
The kids always win, the parents always lose.

-- They are my fam too
They flow my blood through
John Wall
Latkes
Basketball
Soccer.
Selling out
For the squad
No doubt
We'll applaud.

For people who do them
And make sure that the truth is heard
No matter what
Who aren't afraid to go away from
What they know
To be more complete
Learners and listeners
Eager to change the world
My doorstep is your own

My blood flows through peace
And love
And joy
My home is everywhere and anywhere.
For any people who light up the world.
For anybody.  For anybody.
Mi casa es tu casa
I want to hear you
I love you.


Ice in the Books ~

The bouncing basketball buckets sating that fire for...
Sliding superficial soccer slingshots soaring through the sky for...
Making the last shot, gliding on high for...
Winning the medal, jump in the sky for...
It's icy but cold for...
What? It's the joy of getting yelled at to win a...
Game?
Flying on by going for the...
Fame?
Selling out, books and hook (shots), it feels the...
Same?
Look.
I run the court like John Wall
Make 'em fall
Runnin' past 'em so fast they can't think
"Hey coach, please give me a drink?"
Defenders, they stop, drop, and roll
We're not in a fire, y'all are so droll.
Look.
Ice in those veins that leave dreams deferred
The meaning of life, it ends up...
Blurred.
It can bring kids up, and take them down.
But freeze that moment, unless you're LeBron...
'Cause not many are gonna reach stardom
Truly, the ice is in the books.
Look.
School is what will make the world...
Shook.


Phoebe ~

Phoebe
Named after goddess of the moon
The same moon that looked upon you at birth
It glowed, an orb in full
And every night when I look up
I see you
A glowing orb
Of light.
In the darkness
A truth
Of boundless joy

Phoebe
I remember
When you were Yoda
Your crinkled, adorable face
Knowing in a way unknown

Phoebe
You're my zippy prophet
You run
And run
And run
Spreading warmth to everyone

Phoebe
Your smile
Lights up a city
I swear it does

Phoebe
What a beautiful name
Your eyes make the skies sparkle
And the heavens, you put them to shame

Phoebe
When I am down
You are up
Always
Eternally
My moon.
Of light.

Phoebe.
I love you.