"the danger of a single story."

http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html

Okay, so I know this is almost 20 minutes long, but it’s a glorious 20 minutes and therefore totally worth your time.

I decided to share it specifically because she says she heard that to be a successful writer, one must have had a rough childhood.

In some ways, I did have a rough childhood, but in a lot of ways I didn’t. I think this may or may not be a human experience—the oscillation between joy and pain and everything in between. Rocket science, I know. Some things are hard and some things are easy, imagine that. Anyway, in listening to this woman’s thoughts about “a single story,” I realized that I am allowed to experience and express both that pain and that joy. In fact, I value in myself the fact that I so intensely experience both these emotions, as well as a full gamut of other emotions. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that my story is one of vastly varying emotions, each transforming me in its own right.

Enjoy. Love, mt