Many Stories Matter
"All of these stories make me who I am. But to insist on only these negative stories is to flatten my experience and to overlook the many other stories that formed me. 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...Stories matter. 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 Ngozi Adichie, from "The Danger of a Single Story," TEDGlobal 2009
See also:
- "Embracing Otherness, Embracing Myself," Thandie Newton, TED Talks, July 2011
- "Looks aren't everything. Believe me, I'm a model," Cameron Russell, TED Talks, Oct. 2012