Lately I've been regularly running into questions about how to tell stories, and of whose stories to tell. My good friend Bryan Mukandi in a recent blog gave the perspective of Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, who gave a talk to Ted.com about the danger of the "single story" of Africa which makes people in the West unable to empathise with African problems because they have such limited, immutable ideas of what African problems are.
Apart from writing prize-winning, Oprah-friendly, book clubbish novels about African lives in all their joys and complexities, how can we make people leap from that single story to something more reflective of reality? Adichie's experience of being Nigerian in the US was that what people expected of her was some mix of grinding poverty, tribal dancing and mysticism, and a Lion Kingish relationship with nature. Not universities, pop music and hair dos. I'm perfectly familiar with this limited view of Africa: I'm more than a little prone to it myself, since at this time of year my favourite song, for all its political incorrectness, is still Do They Know It's Christmas.
Working for a development NGO, I encounter the problem of the single story regularly, and I'm not always satisfied by how we address it. Enough with the negativity: here's where I think we got it right: three audio-visual stories from Sierra Leone told in the words of the individuals who received our help. What's lovely about these stories, I think, is how transparently they show rural African life in all its simplicity and complication.
If I could only achieve one thing as a result of working in "development" for a living, (and I'm not convinced I can even do that much) it would be this: illustrate to Irish people how communities in the rest of the world are not unlike communities here. That means messy, close-knit, politicised, bitchy, determined, self-interested and endlessly resourceful. Is that more negative adjectives than positive? Well, I'm fairly cynical. That's pretty much how I view humanity, but it's also what I love about it.
The Sierra Leone stories got me thinking a lot about how badly we usually communicate something as simple and as incommunicable as Rural African Life. I found myself in a series of email exchanges, with wunderblogger/ wunderkind Jane Ruffino, and with miracle filmmaker-photographer Michael Kelly Kelly. Michael Kelly made a beautiful video about a community Trocaire supports in Malawi recently, which achieves much the same effect as the Sierra Leone stories, and so makes me equally proud. Which brings me to what I'm really thinking about: more than just African stories, but stories generally, stories that are hard to tell, and hence, oral history.
I've spent this evening wandering the internet guided primarily by Jane and Michael, and half memories of my own, looking for tales that are similarly dignified and motivating, that can make us connect with the lives of others. I was incredibly moved by this one: a Ugandan man who had been abducted as a child, told with spirit and hope through (his own?) child's illustrations. I was touched by this story of a teenage mother in New York: beautiful photos tracing the difficulties of a girl who thought that she had no alternatives when she got pregnant, because this may be her only opportunity to have a child. I was enchanted by this tale of a lesbian woman who confronts the fact that her family is racist, that the Klan is part of her own personal heritage.
The idea of oral history isn't exclusive to the audio-visual media. It's ancient, and one of its best proponents (thanks so much to Jane for this insight) was Studs Terkel, an American broadcaster who broadcast interviews with the ornery people of Chicago for more than 45 years from 1952.
What these stories have in common is that the subject of the story controls the tale. So often, particularly in the NGO world, we won't let go of that control. I'm guilty of it myself; so delighted by my own desire to storytell, to wordsmith, that I can't allow my ego recede into the background. And I am conscious that I've told Nana's story over and over, but I never worked out the technology to let her tell it herself.
I'm a fan of The Hub, a forum for sharing videos about human rights; but I think it highlights a problem that we in the development/ human rights community run into all the time. In our advocacy, in our campaigning, but most of all in our fundraising, we're pretty urgently required to communicate how awful life is for poor people everywhere. (This is true whether you're the Simon Community in Ireland or Unicef in the Ivory Coast or Amnesty International talking about Zimbabwe). It's not always constructive to give the voice to individuals, who invariably find themselves sorting out their own problems. And yet, to overcome the single story, that's what we need to do.
And that's what I'm most interested in doing right now. I don't often do this, but on this occasion, I'd really like to ask for comments on this (overlong) blog post, and more importantly on the links. Am I on my own in thinking that these are the stories, the insights, that might change the world?
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4 comments:
Guess that's the difference between blogging and journalism. The one is controlled by the subject and the other by the object. Maybe someday some fusion of the two will give us the inside and the outside of the mobius strip of a human story! :) Since 1989 we've seen the most fundamental revolution in human communication (ergo: human development) since the invention of language itself. Yet 75% of the world does not have guaranteed access to fresh water let alone broadband. Yet this will change. Economics demands it. Our survival as a species may well yet also. So many places to go so many people to meet on the interwebs you walk with a careful tread. Best of luck with your blog I followed your link over from Bryan's!
One of my mates is seriously worried about me and thinks I should just chill out. That's my opening disclaimer, an acknowledgement that I am aware of plenty of people who think my ideals are unrealistic.
That said, I don't know Carol. I think facilitating the telling of others' stories is a good thing, but creating an environment in which our mediation is unnecessary is even better. What does that mean? There's this US Civil Rights film in which Samuel L Jackson kills a white guy who raped his daughter. A brave white acquaintance, at great personal risk, agrees to defend him. During one of their lawyer client conversations, Jackson, at pains to explain his view of the situation, says to his lawyer buddy, "You're one of the bad guys, you're one of them," or something like that.
What I think Jackson's character is trying to get across is that even the good guys, the ones who operate within the structures of the world that oppresses 'subaltern groups' (yes, I know, going to school has messed up my vocabulary), are corrupted. So people like you, me, and just about anyone else who has the ability to help Malawian farmers tell their own stories, we prop up the structures that keep them from having the ability to get by without us. So even in helping, we perpetuate in some way their harm.
I don't know. These are all just incoherent ideas swimming around in my mind. Worse, I have nothing to add in the way of solutions, which must be irritating.
One of the reasons I hang at your blog Bryan is your outsider's perspective, told as honestly and without fear of criticism as you tell it. Outside in. That's the name. Wearing the inside out Pink Floyd would say. But refer you to my first post how many sides has a Moibius strip? :) People have an inside and an outside and if you could see them all the time you'd see they were the same, ultmately. But, we don't tell our stories for the most part. At least not in as truthful a way as we might. We act them much more truthfully. 'Tis all tales told by idiots. Full of sound and fury. But signifying nothing? Therein Macbeth's and many's an other brave man's tragic flaw. His overweening selfishness. He was prepared to subordinate his better nature to his vaunting ambition, and to obliterate anything that got in its way. All he needed was encouragement from the right source. And so all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. History repeats. Others have trodden the paths of foolishness we do. With known and predictable results. But we keep doing the same thing time after time and expecting a different result each time. Is it that we are in denial? That the only real lies we tell are to ourselves, in denying our own stories? To ourselves most of all, and to others in what we pretend to be from day to day, but never all the time. So, what if we become honest? Expect truth from others in proportion to how much we demand it from ourselves. Do so all the time. Do so when it is least convenient. Then at least, regardless of what it costs us in terms of the lives we live and our expectations, we can see the daily disparities between what we say we are and what we do is and try to close that gap which is to my mind the beginning of a sanity worth having. Ceasing to swallow camels and strain at gnats. Unexamined life is not worth living. Why should Malawian fishermen not be as entitled to examine theirs as much as any? All the help you can give is in a worthy cause there I'd suggest. "Thou comest to use thy tongue. Thy story, quickly!" Or words to that effect. Kenosis. Gotta be a good thing. For self and others.
It's an entirely noble ambition, of course. Stille. Here are some random thoughtas from a passing stranger.
In the form of fictyion, if fiction os nwhat you are considering, ultimately, there is only the story, and one's faith with it. In the telling what is becomes what is told, and both are somewhat changed in the process.
But there is a type of truth in it, which springs from that faith.
I think of Ian McEwans writing - wherein the psychological reality of his charactyers is so carefully constructed, the subtle moments, the unsayable fears, the stream of consciousness, the disconnected senses of memory, self myth, the lives of others, the fears and the ambitions, the pettiness...all collide in the moment to make our decisions for us, and in those unspoken moments we ourselves are made.
It's a type of truth, it's not without weakness or problems, but the perfect story will never be written. And thousands of perfect stories are just that - unwritten ideas that those who dream of are unequal to. Committing to life is committing to imperfection. It is the stuff of us.
So, fiction requires you to compromise with that faith, but honestly. And, if it is anothers story, reuires you to compromise and interpret their truth too, whatever that may or may not be.
To tell anothers story with ruthlessly tender truth is to try to understand another as deeply as one must understand oneself. And who can claim to have mastered even that. It's an act of profound understanding. Meaning is such a delicate and complex thing. So many moments past and present are balanced in even the simplest of decisions.
This is not a reason not to do so. But one must be careful to understand the decision. Decisions are that which create us, and tragedy is the story of decisions not wisely understood.
Simplicity in stories is contained in part in what is not said. But, it is into the what is not said that the reader can pour themselves. Some mstories have a malleable simplicity that loans itself well to remodelling. So, even a dignified and stripped down narrative is still never just what it is. It is read, appropriated, understood, and situated. Nothing written is really set in stone. It is mobile, in time and in context. It is understood not as itself entirely - though that cann be more and that can be less the case - but it is understood, often,, quite unfortunately, from a position. Convictio can shape things more sturdy than stories to their beliefs.
Perhaps it is like so much else in the world. We cannot be responsible for the actions, intentions, and interpretations of others, though we may wish to address them.
One can only tell a story with faith. What the rest of the world does with that, including reading a single story as the tale of an entire continent - how bizarre, reductivist, unimaginative and ridiculous..... - well. That's life.
In re working with other people to tell their stories. No help here. Sorry. No experience.
Good luck with it.
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