Dangers of a Single Story

In my early schooling, the single stories of White people were present. We read stories of white, middle-class, heterosexual people, saw them in our textbooks, and studied the things that impacted them in health, social studies, and English. Learning about these stories told me that these were the only stories worth learning and that they were the most important. In my high school English classes, we began to see stories written by authors with diverse backgrounds. We read “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” which quickly became one of my all-time favourite books. We also read “Halfbreed” by Maria Campbell, which was an eye-opening novel that showed a new perspective I had not previously known about the experiences of Metis people in Saskatchewan.

I bring into the classroom white-privileged, middle-class background lenses. My biases make me want to read and teach material that tells stories like mine. To work against these biases, it is essential for me to remember that my story is not everyone’s story. To just present stories like mine would give students only a single story. Being an English major, with the hope of one day having my own high school English classes to teach, Chapter 7 of Kumashiro’s reading was extra interesting. It showed me that we can not merely read or hear stories from different backgrounds and then ask the same sorts of questions you would ask about typical white-centred literature. Without asking questions to prompt a social justice understanding, works by authors who break the normative narrative can, as Kumashiro says, “reinforce stereotypes if teachers fail to ask questions about how students are reading them.” (75) To work against these biases, new literature needs to be introduced from authors who break the normative narratives, and teachers must adapt the way they ask questions about this literature.