The words used to describe the body, the harm, and the resistance all shape how women feel about themselves and how they are seen. If the term “sexual violence” is pushed into euphemism, the conventional structures for understanding and naming that violence shift. A woman’s personal narrative of “survivor,” “advocate,” or simply “woman who was harmed”, for instance, becomes harder to anchor. Over time, the erosion of precise terms weakens individual agency and collective recognition.
Throughout the film, gendered language serves as a weapon of subjugation. When Patrick says Irene is “good for nothing,” and Appiah praises another woman as “a woman of virtue” because she “knows how to cook, wash, and [work] like a woman,” language becomes a tool for erasure and female subjugation. Each insult and “compliment” reinforces a hierarchy where womanhood is synonymous with servitude. As Nigerian critic Obododimma Oha notes, female subjugation thrives through symbolic violence—through everyday words that strip women of dignity while elevating men.
That evening, the evening I became a woman, began like any other. I had stepped out just before dusk, when the sky still held onto the last of its colour—soft purple, pale blue, kind orange. The sun spilled its light in gold ribbons, coating everything with warmth, so that everything glowed with the godlike radiance of love. It had become my ritual to walk through the quiet suburbs to the hills, where I could climb the rocks, breathe in the green, and look out at Accra lying still on the horizon.
In Primary Four, our Ga teacher, Mr. Ayibontey, had told us, “March is the sunniest month of the year.” He wrote it carefully in Ga on the blackboard—O-tso-ki-ri-ki-ri—and said it was so-called because “the sun burnt with a furious blast.” March, to me, was heat, unapologetic and alive. But the evening I became a soothsayer, there had been a downpour.
The danger of society’s insistence on the single, simplified version of a woman’s story lies not just in invisibility and misrepresentation, but in the erasure of that complexity and flattening of her humanity. When women are portrayed solely as sexual objects (not subjects, for women are rarely the subject of sexual desire), intellect and agency are dismissed.
Despite strides in education, leadership, and activism, research shows that women make up only about a quarter of all people featured as news sources and subjects in global news. Even when they appear as the subjects of news stories, women’s stories are underreported and often underrepresented. To put it matter-of-factly, female sources and subjects are usually underquoted and mostly relegated to the sidelines.
The language we employ to describe ourselves and our experiences profoundly shapes our identity and influences others’ perceptions of us. How we speak — and are spoken about — is never neutral; it carries cultural assumptions about which traits are valued or devalued, often along gendered lines. While women’s emphasis on connection, empathy, and community building is often recognized as a valuable strength, it paradoxically carries an undertone of perceived weakness and usually leads to implied expectations.
The Tales We Tell is our attempt to listen differently. Through these stories, we explore how agenda setting, framing, and linguistic bias shape not only media and culture but also our collective understanding of identity and power. Together, these essays and stories confront the “single story” that flattens women’s lives into narrow archetypes — the victim, the muse, the temptress — and offer new ways of seeing: stories told with women, not merely about them.
Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond is a commanding, yet fresh presence that mirrors the exuberant charm and depth of her highly acclaimed books. Even over the phone, the soft-spoken tone of the bestselling Ghanaian-American author belies a deep-seated confidence, reminiscent of our first meeting at the studios of Citi FM at a reading event in July 2022. Yet, she reveals a humbling…
Living a life of authenticity can be an act of rebellion for women who dare to move from the ‘herd’ life to find worth and expression in their unique identity. The world may demand conformity, but you know too much to fall for this trick, dear millennial woman.