Towards the end of her 2013 TED Talk “The Danger of a Single Story,” novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie sums up the ways narratives shape our world, and why they are so important:
Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.
This, in essence, is at the heart of Evening WURDs’ new monthly series “Evening Stories,” hosted by Dr. James Peterson, former English professor and host of the drive time program on Philly’s independent Black talk radio station. Starting this Thursday, and continuing on the third Thursday of every month, Peterson will lead a public conversation — over the airwaves on 900AM — about a fiction or nonfiction story, inviting readers to join in and analyze the writing together.
Peterson will start with a story about stories by Adichie, author of the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Americanah. “The Danger of a Single Story” was a 2009 TED talk by Adichie about the misunderstandings that can occur when a single narrative about a people or a place takes hold.
“Her story about how she came to literature and how she could not imagine herself in the literature she read early on, coming from a writer, is amazing,” Peterson says, noting that this was also the origin story of the great American writer Zora Neale Hurston. “It’s incredible to hear her beginnings.”
Peterson will be joined by Ann Kowal Smith, founder of Reflection Point — formerly Books at Work — which uses books and stories as a means to professional development, team bonding and exploring new ways to work together. Peterson has been a frequent facilitator for Reflection Point, which he says “builds relationships by talking about literature.”
“We have terrible literacy rates in the city of Philadelphia. I imagine that’s because, how do you justify the work? Well, I have an audience of people, and I am going to practice a little bit of literacy as a way to bring my own literacy and theirs along.” — James Peterson
A college professor who most recently taught at Mercer County Community College, Peterson is best known for his work analyzing Hip Hop / Black culture and language, and for his writings about how Black people speak and how that shows up on the printed page. He is a giant fan of science fiction, of big books and ideas, and a writer of lyric prose (often for The Citizen).
He is, also, cognizant that his audience may not be ready for all that. “We have terrible literacy rates in the city of Philadelphia,” Peterson says, noting that he has reached out to several people who work on adult literacy at the state or city level to go on his show and they never responded. “I imagine that’s because, how do you justify the work? Well, I have an audience of people, and I am going to practice a little bit of literacy as a way to bring my own literacy and theirs along.”
That’s why the Evening Stories segment will concentrate on short stories, both fiction and nonfiction, that will (if possible) also be available in audio. (And Peterson insists pre-reading the story isn’t even necessary.) Listeners can phone 215-634-8065 to join the discussion, or send comments via email, or on their Facebook Live feed at @Forwurd. This is an experiment, Peterson notes, that he hopes will prove fruitful — entertaining, informative, moving — for his listeners.
“A lot of things can be built and solved over short stories, and literature,” he says, “if only we did it more.”
Evening WURDs, every third Thursday of the month starting December 19, 6 to 7 pm, 96.1FM / 900AM / WURDRADIO.COM and ON WURD TV VIA FACEBOOK: @FORWURD. Read the first story, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, here.
