The power of stories

Tomorrow is writer Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie's birthday. We hope she has a very good one.

Chimamanda has given two TED talks, and in The Danger of a Single Story, from July 2009, she has a lot to say about stereotypes.

'The single story creates stereotypes,and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.'

She talks about how she saw a boy from her childhood as 'poor' and that had prevented her from seeing that he and his family could be anything else. And she tells us - comically - about when she herself was seen purely as 'African' only, and before anything else. Of a new college roommate, she says,

'She asked if she could listen to what she called my "tribal music," and was consequently very disappointed when I produced my tape of Mariah Carey. (Laughter)'

When people think about refugees, asylum seekers, economic migrants, things get very mixed up and messy. Some people have one story - the 'coming over here taking our jobs' story. Others have another single story 'there is no fraud, there is no pretense'. And there are a thousand in between.

Terms like asylum seeker and economic migrant have different meanings and yet are used in news stories as if they are the same thing. And how would we think about someone fleeing Somalia, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq - not because they themselves were specifically persecuted but because it's just not safe. They would probably not qualify for 'asylum' - but oughtn't they be allowed to be safer than they are? Remember that image of a dad and his daughter, Syrians arriving on Kos, that was in the news recently? I read someone discuss words and settle on 'neighbours in need' - it felt right to me. We'd all help a neighbour - wouldn't we?

Sadly our media is not good at the nuanced story, the story that recognises that for every person there is a shade of difference. And so the stories we hear about immigration, asylum, economic migration all get mixed up and mashed up and we get no closer to agreeing, or solving the issue.

We tread a fine line here - we're called Who Made Your Pants? because we tell you. But each of our team is a real woman with her own story and a lot of that stuff is personal and private, not necessarily because its a horror story but because, like you, our lives are our own. In some ways I am sure we could add to the stories about migration out there with the stories of our team in a really beneficial way - but I'm not sure we should need to force people to disclose, simply to be able to be able to accept that that that person has valid needs.

Anyway. Do check out The Power of a Single Story and We Should All Be Feminists - enjoy. And happy birthday again for tomorrow to a great woman, a great writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.