Who Owns Our Stories?
Should outsiders tell the stories of the marginalized?
1.
I took an interest in disability advocacy despite no known disability in my family. Neither did I have disabled friends. In fact, my interest in disability advocacy was inspired by a selfish reason: I wanted to be smart. I’d read a 120-long list of how to become smart. On the list was “learn sign language or braille.” Sign language was the most accessible of the two, so I signed up for sign language classes, completely oblivious to how it would change my life, potentially forever.
I have since volunteered with Disabled people, acquired a desire to increase disability representation in the private sector (so they’ll become self-sufficient as most want to be, and they’ll rely less on aid from family and friends). I have also written my postgraduate dissertation on the representation of disability in Public Relations and Communication, which is my field. Lately though, I’ve been wrestling with guilt as I consider that my privilege as an able-bodied person might be precisely why I’m the wrong person to advocate for persons with disability (PWDs).
One of the observations from my research was how able-bodied people sometimes silence the voices of the very people who need to be heard. Of course, we’re well-intentioned in our advocacy. We are disheartened by the marginalization of PWDs, and we cannot believe the world’s stubborn able-normativity, so we commit to being “the voice of the voiceless”. By so doing, however, we run the risk of adopting a God-complex, a quiet conviction that we are best suited to speak for the marginalized, that we know what’s best for the marginalized. The consequence: we end up suppressing the very people whose voices we set out to amplify.
2.
On the recommendation of an acquaintance I started reading Rebecca Kuang’s Yellowface. It’s an interesting story about a Caucasian writer, June Hayward, who published a novel about Chinese laborers in World War I. The problem is she stole the idea (and entire first draft) from her dead Chinese-American friend. Soon after the novel is published, Twitter warlords call for the cancellation of June. They cannot believe the audacity of an outsider to tell the story — a painful one at that — of a people she has no connection to.
“How can an outsider tell our story?” They ask. Incredulously, they wonder what gives an outsider — a very privileged one at that — the right to make profit off their story.
In one scene, set at a book reading event, an audience member asks June, “why do you think you're the right person to tell [the story of Chinese laborers in World War I],” and she responds by arguing that creativity should not be censored. If the storyteller is willing to do the work to tell an honest story, and they can do it with empathy, June offered that they should be able to tell the stories that interest them.
3.
In September, it was announced that Chinua Achebe’s classic Things Fall Apart was being adapted into a TV series, with Idris Elba starring as the protagonist, Okonkwo. Idris Elba is English, born in London, a far cry from Okonkwo, a thoroughbred Igbo man who detested colonialists and their influence.
Soon after the announcement was made, Nigerians began to tweet their disapproval on X en masse.
“Imagine watching Things Fall Apart and hearing Idris Elba talk in wassup wakandan accent.”
“Elba playing Okonkwo is only a reflection of our failure to tell our own stories.”
“I admire Idris Elba but it beats me as to why the producers of the… TV series based on Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart chose to snub a Nigerian actor to play the lead role of Okonkwo.”
As a Nigerian, I understood. I find it cringey to watch adaptations of African literature told through wannabe African accents that sound nothing like I’ve ever heard in Africa — it’s Jill Scott playing Mma Ramotswe in The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, as well as Thandie Newton and Anika Noni Rose acting Olanna and Kainene respectively in Half of a Yellow Sun.
But who determines the credentials for storytelling? What disqualifies people from telling the stories they are invested in, whether that’s in a book, movie, song, or even advocacy?
As expected, it’s not an easy pill to swallow watching outsiders telling our stories, more so when they haven't consulted with us. We feel a sense of betrayal when this happens. We are angry because those are our stories to tell. People with no experience or connection to our pain have no right to expose our pain, especially when we would rather nurse them in private. Furthermore, outsiders have no right to translate our experiences — they’re outsiders, bound to misinterpret our pain due to their privilege.
But would it be fairer if outsiders implicitly assumed the entitlement of insiders for every story they wanted to tell (or be a part of)?
What if it was mandated that every able-bodied disability advocate must be matched by an equal number of disabled disability advocates? What if we insisted that every book, movie, or song about slavery, world wars, and the depravities of the past was created by (or, at the least, in collaboration with) people who experienced them? Would we tell a more inclusive and honest story that way?
I could submit that doing so would needlessly prolong the process of storytelling, but I cannot trust that I’m not offering it for my own selfish reasons. I’ll say this, however, that as long as earth remains, outsiders will continue to tell stories they’ve experienced nothing of. It isn’t right or wrong. It just is.
Perhaps we need to consider that outsiders are sometimes in the best position to tell these stories. It’s not a question of fairness or rightness. It’s a question of platform, i.e., who has the platform to tell our story? Who has the attention of the crowd? Who can best say what needs to be said?
As it stands, I do not have tidy answers, and I cannot make a case for outsider storytelling as an outsider myself. I just hope that the outsiders who tell the stories of marginalized groups tell it with grace, dignity to the communities they speak for, and a gracious empathy that embodies our shared humanity.
I hope they would approach these stories with humility, not arrogant presumptuousness; engaged, not distant; genuine, not obliged.
