February is Black History Month, and we have the opportunity to learn about the stories of many Black individuals and communities in our country’s history. As we listen and view these stories, writer Chimamanda Adichie reminds us: “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.”

She also talks about the “danger of a single story,” and describes how, as a child growing up in Nigeria and loving to write stories, she wrote about white children drinking tea in London, because those were the children’s stories available to her. She was much older before she learned she could write stories about her own Nigerian people and communities.

What stories do you hold about those different from you? Multiple stories or only one? Do your stories come from experiences with a variety of people, or from stereotypes in movies and TV? How might stories you hear this month expand your awareness of the rich variety of experiences of black people in the United States?