Stories matter. But who tells them? And who hears them? In her TED talk ‘The danger of a single story’, Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warns that if we hear only a single story about a person or culture, we risk a critical misunderstanding. She says, ‘It is impossible to talk about the single story without talking about power … How they are told, when they are told, who tells them, how many stories are told, are really dependent on power.’
The two books reviewed here are both, in different ways, about stories. In his review of Suma Din’s ethnographic study of Muslim mothers, Lat Blaylock emphasises how the author has ‘given voice’ to women whose stories are seldom heard and who are frequently victims of ‘the single story’ and the stereotyped view it presents. The second book explores the nature of biblical stories using critical narrative theory to empower the reader to engage with the stories, developing their own insights and interpretations, rather than relying on the views of expert others that can get ‘in the way of the story’.
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