Chimamanda Adichie, author of Half of a Yellow Sun and The Thing Around Your Neck, inspired her audience with a presentation about the power single stories had on her global consciousness as a child. She grew up as a Nigerian girl reading British and American literature. Consequently, she believed that all children in literature had to be white and play in the snow. She did not have even one model that portrayed in literature people who talked and lived as she did. Here is the rest in her own words:

Adichie’s main point hits home for me. She recounts her experience traveling to Guadalajara, Mexico from the U.S. While in the U.S., she had been reading the U.S. accounts of Mexico being a state torn apart by immigration laws and drug wars. When she arrived in Mexico, she discovered that many people were living healthy and happy lives. She felt as if she had played into and believed the stereotypes that the American media was feeding its citizens. Choosing to only learn about one story of a culture, event, or political “fact” means that your world view is limited and so often, wrong.

I wish upon wishes that when I teach So Far From the Bamboo Grove by Yoko Kawashima Watkins that I had the time to also teach A Year of Impossible Goodbyes by Sook Nyul Choi. As it stands, I stopped teaching the former because I didn’t have enough time to teach the latter, too. And now that I think about it, I probably wouldn’t be doing the subject (Japanese occupation of Korea at the end of WWII) justice even if I did teach both books because they are single stories of each country’s experiences, failing to offer multiple perspectives of each.

As the librarian at my school, I have the wonderful opportunity to create electives and suggest ideas that might otherwise be impossible if I were a classroom teacher with a more set schedule. Perhaps I’ll think of a way to teach more than the single story to a classroom of kids so that my students (and I, too) develop and nurture a multi-story view of the world in which we all live.

P.S. TED truly rocks:

via The Insider

Boston.com published an article, Rising to meet an infinite need, about the Boston-based Partners in Health that conveys nicely what they have done for years to help build health care services in Haiti and what they’re doing now in the wake of the earthquake. If you’re wondering which organization of the many you should donate to help recovery efforts, I strongly suggest Partners in Health. Your money will go directly to saving peoples’ lives.