Reader,
Although it was a while back, I remember how deeply affected I was the first time I heard Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s talk The Danger of a Single Story. In her incredibly well-known talk Adichie speaks to the power of stories, but also warns how, in our lives, we often operate from the perspective of knowing only a single story—about a person, a situation, or even a conflict.
But what if, as writers, we explored only a single layer of our voice?
This question became even more urgent for me after reading a writer friend’s beautiful essay. Before sending it to me, she shared how an earlier round of edits with another editor had left her feeling as though her voice had been stripped away. Curious (and because I’ve felt this way in the past too), I asked to see that version, expecting a diluted, watered-down piece.
But instead, I recognized a version of her I had experienced before in real life—just not yet on the page.
I know this writer to be loving, influential, powerful, and wise. I hear it in the way she speaks, in the way she loves on her young daughter during our Zoom calls, and the way she embodies a strong sense of self-regard. She’s genuine. And there it was, in her writing—not erased, but revealed. A new layer of her voice staring up at us, waiting.
I shared this with her because sometimes, we need someone else to shine a flashlight on what has always been there, waiting to be seen.
In thinking about the danger of a single story, I can’t help but consider the danger of not having the right people in our corner to help us make sense of these newly exposed layers. In my early years as a writer, I had a good handful of writer-mentors say things to me about my writing that made me ask “Where?! Where do you see that! Show me!” We need people who can see the things we cannot. For those of us writing complex stories, this goes beyond working with an editor who has a keen eye—it requires building strong relationships over time, learning to know ourselves, and allowing others to ask us the vulnerable, reflective questions that help us poke at the new dimensions of our work.
Because when we stay closed, when we focus solely on the voice we have always used, what do we miss out on?
When I look for an example in my own work, I think about my hybrid memoir, Dear Current Occupant(2018). In that book, I invited the reader to walk through the mess with me—to wade through the rubble, to feel curious and, at times, confused. I wanted to take them on a walking tour. I wanted them to ask questions. I wanted them to do some of the work. To dig. I wanted to use the blur I experienced as a child, as an engine. To do this, I had to make difficult stylistic choices, but it was clear to me what I was trying to do with one very specific layer of my voice.
My books since then have shifted in style and genre, yes—but they are all simply different layers of my voice. Pieces of me that were always there, waiting for the right time and the right environment.
With my narrative nonfiction book, Let It Go (2024), I called on a more upfront, conversational voice. The lyrical elements of my style are still there, just at a different volume. And that is what continues to inspire me to write. I get to decide where to shine the flashlight, for how long. I get to decide how loudly to turn up the poetics versus how I use dialogue or straightforward prose. I get to choose the right tool for the right job. And it is in that decision-making where a writer becomes a writer.
This is also why I spend so much time building relationships with writers rather than opting for a purely transactional approach. In a world that constantly pushes us to hurry, to rush to the next thing, I feel deeply grounded in slowing down, in making space for discovery.
There is a danger in a single story. And there is a danger in an unheard layer of voice. And like Adichie says in her talk, "Show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become."
By refusing to stay within a single layer, I return to my latest book project with fresh curiosity: What will I find this time? Who will I become?
Because as writers, we get to choose when to let readers wade through the rubble, when to be blunt, when to be precise. We get to create the trust and the environment that allow others to see what we could not see ourselves.
Reflective Question: What has someone else saw in your writing that took you to a new unexplored place?
with love
Chelene
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