Corrections

After seeing Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 's talk about « The danger of a single story », I'll have the opportunity to think and to write about moments where it happened to me, and to start a changing of it.

First of all, what's a single story ?

The novelist explains that our reality is always made easier to understand and to handle through stories that are told by the media, books, films and popular narratives.

These stories are usually short and simple, and they act the same way as stereotypes.

It creates categories, it puts all a bunch of people in it, and it makes you deal with reality in a very reductionist logic.

This is not a bad thing in such, because human brain needs these categories to be able to think clearly and to avoid spending ten minutes on each analysis.

However, it has to be used consciously and cleverly, which means that each person should be able to acknowledge his own categories, and to deconstruct them when they become problematic.

The moment came when I have to give my personal point of view.

I realize how difficult it is to be reflective about these « single stories » I have about things, places or people.

The fact is that it took me one week to think about a single story I'm using daily.

This is very surprising since the impressive number of single stories and stereotypes we're using everyday !

I think I'm gonna write about the stereotypes I'm always using when someone calls me for a babysitting, in a family I don't know yet.

When the person calls me, it takes me about 20 seconds to have a clear preconceived idea about the family.

Is it a man of a woman calling?

It means a lot to me about how the couple shares « education and housework » tasks.

Did the person give me his/her first name or his/her surname ?

If the person used a surname, does it sound foreign ?

They must be European workers or ambassadors or something...which means that they will pay me correctly.

If they ask me how much I'm asking for an hour of babysitting, I usually guess they care about how much money they spend, which can mean two things : either they don't have much money (in that case I'm asking the lowest/regular rate), or they have a lot, but they are a bit stingy.

This example shows how my concrete acting differs from the way my brain has been working.

Well, writing this, I realize how horrible it is.

But usually, this doesn't creates much problems.

I'm sometimes a bit surprised by the family when my expectations are not matching the reality, but again, it takes me about 20 seconds to adapt to this new perception.

The story I just told isn’t a « single story » as Adichies's mean it, I know it.

But I find it so hard to shed some light on our own single stories that I preferred talking about stereotypes, which are more obvious to me.

From now on, I know that I'll be more aware of this interesting concept, and I'm pretty sure I'll be able, in one or two months, to tell a single story of mine.