When individuals have a limited point of view about another person or country, they tend to overlook the underlying and meaningful stories that lie within that group or place. In her Ted talk, “The Danger of a Single Story”, Chimamanda Adichie describes this concept as a single story. Assuming someone's life or way of being simply based off of a single story leads to stereotyping and misunderstanding. In the article "Critical Race Methodology: Counter-Storytelling as an Analytical Framework for Education" authors Daniel G. Solorzano and Tara J. Yosso explain that those living in the margins of society could potentially resist these single stories by telling others of their own unprecedented experiences. Reyna Grande's memoir, "The Distance
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First and foremost, Mexican immigrants can achieve exceptional academic standing despite the fact that they are descendants of another country. In Solorzano and Yosso article, the two demonstrate that narrow minded, majoritarian individuals believe that Mexicans and other people of color are biologically incapable of attaining any standard form of education due to the their ethnic and racial ties. They justify this claim by reinforcing the notion that their upbringing has much to do with their lack of comprehension and therefore, they should spend their efforts working, because it is all they have ever known (30). In Grande’s memoir, she dispels these single stories when she, a natural born Mexican, is the the first person“ in [her] family to graduate college” (319). Throughout the course of her life in the states, her father has constantly reminded her and her siblings about the …show more content…
soil, they begin to understand that this single story is for the most part, anything but the truth. Adichie's Ted Talk confirms this single story when she describes what it was like growing up in Nigeria when she was surrounded by American books that depicted the characters as “white and blue eyed” (2009). In the same manner, Grande and her siblings were also lead to believe that America is made up of “golden-haired, blue-eyed” ( 84) people. What they are not told is that America, the land of opportunity, is made up of all kinds of different people, including Mexicans and Africans just like them. When Grande was little, she could not put the pieces together even after meeting her younger sister Betty, an American citizen, whose complexion was “very dark” (74). She did not fully understand that just like her sister, there were others in America that looked different than what she had perceived in books, movies or even word of mouth. It was only when she moved to United States that she was fully exposed to other nationalities, including Italians, other Mexicans, Salvadorans, and Asians (Grande 172, 173, 246). Single stories much like this one, deprive people of the complete stories that reside beneath the surface. This creates a society with a limited perspective which leads people like Adichie and Grande to think of themselves as lesser than
First and foremost, Mexican immigrants can achieve exceptional academic standing despite the fact that they are descendants of another country. In Solorzano and Yosso article, the two demonstrate that narrow minded, majoritarian individuals believe that Mexicans and other people of color are biologically incapable of attaining any standard form of education due to the their ethnic and racial ties. They justify this claim by reinforcing the notion that their upbringing has much to do with their lack of comprehension and therefore, they should spend their efforts working, because it is all they have ever known (30). In Grande’s memoir, she dispels these single stories when she, a natural born Mexican, is the the first person“ in [her] family to graduate college” (319). Throughout the course of her life in the states, her father has constantly reminded her and her siblings about the …show more content…
soil, they begin to understand that this single story is for the most part, anything but the truth. Adichie's Ted Talk confirms this single story when she describes what it was like growing up in Nigeria when she was surrounded by American books that depicted the characters as “white and blue eyed” (2009). In the same manner, Grande and her siblings were also lead to believe that America is made up of “golden-haired, blue-eyed” ( 84) people. What they are not told is that America, the land of opportunity, is made up of all kinds of different people, including Mexicans and Africans just like them. When Grande was little, she could not put the pieces together even after meeting her younger sister Betty, an American citizen, whose complexion was “very dark” (74). She did not fully understand that just like her sister, there were others in America that looked different than what she had perceived in books, movies or even word of mouth. It was only when she moved to United States that she was fully exposed to other nationalities, including Italians, other Mexicans, Salvadorans, and Asians (Grande 172, 173, 246). Single stories much like this one, deprive people of the complete stories that reside beneath the surface. This creates a society with a limited perspective which leads people like Adichie and Grande to think of themselves as lesser than