A Notion of Song and Destroying the Single Story

This critical essay explores the passage of the creative tradition and spirit of Black women despite facing intersectional discrimination. This paper considers the works of Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, and bell hooks amongst other female writers to consider how the tradition has been maintained through mother-daughter relationships as well as deriving from individual strength and creativity. It seeks to highlight the importance of stories and representation in literature to better connect people to each other and create a better understanding of humans as complex beings by moving beyond the telling of the “single story” and stereotypes, taking note from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s speech “The Danger of a Single Story.”MacKay, CarolEnglis