Why We Need To Tell More Than One Story About Any Culture

I remember the first time I watched Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talks, “The Danger of A Single Story.” It moved me and stayed with me for a long time. I had talked about this very issue to some of my friends but had never heard this point-of-view with such eloquence.

When a big-name New York City-based agent expressed interest in my work, I saw Adichie’s words come to life. He loved my writing but informed me that America wasn’t ready for a happy, immigrant novel. His condition: If I wanted him to pursue the project, I would need the female protagonist to be a bit mellow, depressed, and not empowered.

One of the reasons I wrote Louisiana Catch is because I couldn’t find myself in any of the books that I read. I was frustrated with not being able to locate South Asian novels in bookstores about female protagonists who thought and lived like me and my friends. Either South Asian female characters were all clubbed under the umbrella of women who wore saris, missed eating fish curry, looked up to their husband for confidence, and never embraced America. Or they didn’t exist.

It’s important to tell the stories that only we can tell. I wanted to tell the story about modern, educated, empowered, flawed Indian women working hard to break the shackles of patriarchy, defining their identity, and sipping wine along the way. I wanted to write a story about good Indian men who show up as equals in their partnerships despite not having been brought up with those values.

I wanted to highlight life beyond arranged marriages and tyrannical parenting. I desired to showcase how so many women emerge stronger than they could ever imagine. I wanted to emphasize the power of friendship across generations. I read somewhere that stories about our experiences, hopes and fears, helps break down the power of clichés and stereotypes.

Indra Nooyi, former CEO of PepsiCo and constantly ranked amongst the world’s 100 most powerful women is an Indian immigrant. During her tenure, the company’s sales grew 80%. Why wouldn’t people want to read stories about her?

Priyanka Chopra Jonas became a common name in America after show Quantico, ABC thriller series, became a hit. She is an Indian immigrant who moved to a new country and made a name for herself. Maybe the Nooyis and Chopras of the world represent a small percentage of Indian women. But they do hold space and have helped changed the narrative. I know they have given women like me, my friends, and my cousins a lot of confidence to pursue our dreams and be unapologetic about them.

I tried to convince the agent. If we only hear about people, place or situation from one point of view, we risk accepting one experience as the whole truth. But he refused to change his mind. It was one of the hardest decisions to make, but I walked away and chose not to work with him.

“The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete,” Adichie says in her talk. “They make one story become the only story.”

When Louisiana Catch was published by Modern History Press and ended up doing really well (I won the VOTY Award for it. Past recipients include Chelsea Clinton and founders of the #MeTooMovement), an older PR personality expressed interest and explained her surprise about the strata of Indians I write about in this book. “Your book is beautiful. But the Indians in your book are so affluent,” she exclaimed. “Isn’t India poor?”

Apparently, this woman had traveled to India when I was a little kid (India and the world have changed so much over the past few decades) to some yoga retreat. The people who live-in small-town India and cater to foreign yogis on the banks of River Ganges are diametrically different than those who live in the urban areas of Mumbai, Bangalore, New Delhi, and other metros. They are an equally important part of the stories about India, but they don’t represent the country…just the way people who live in skyscrapers in India’s metros aren’t the face or voice of the entire nation.

In her talk, Adichie reminds us that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding. It was interesting that the media personality chose to only experience the part of India that catered to her white savior guilt/syndrome. She showed up to a rural area, paid big tips, did headstands, pitied the poverty, and started to believe that she had spiritually evolved by learning to say “namaste.” It’s similar to a foreigner wondering, “Aren’t all Americans gun-loving, racist, and obese people who love their happy meals at McDonalds and can’t tell Canada from Mexico on the world map?”

My Point: I chose NOT to believe or write one story about the United States or India. It was an intentional effort to educate myself on both the cultures and do the research. As a writer, it’s my job to do so. The novel took good 6-7 years to research, write, and publish. In Louisiana Catch, the male protagonist and antagonist are both American men. I wrote the characters as if they were human beings in flesh and blood. Their nationality didn’t influence how I created them.

Writer friends: it’s upon us to break stereotypes and share more than one story about a culture, so we can educate the world. While I do write at the intersection of culture, wellness, and women’s empowerment…I try to not make my writing culturally-biased. I will address the hard truths, but I will also show the good. I have Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to thank for that.

“Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity.” ~ Chimamanda Adichie

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Tags: featured, women wirters

Category: On Writing