Depicted is the character of “Anger” from the Pixar animated film Inside Out (2015). A short, red, square-shaped character with flams bursting from his head as he screams in rage.

“Don’t be mad,” is a phrase many of us have heard many times before.

We’re always told to avoid it, that it makes us illogical, irrational, and will only harm the people around us. When many people think of anger we think of stereotypes such as “men punching holes in walls,” “the angry black woman,” “spicy Latinas,” or the character from Inside Out, but why? Anger, like all of our emotions, are not 100% positive or negative, nor will the thing that provoke emotions always make logical sense to everyone. And yet, for some reason we’re often told that while all emotions are valid, anger is the only exception, its ugly and something to be ashamed of feeling, unhealthy even. When reading Stryker’s letter to Victor Frankenstein, the rage that she harbors due to quote: “the necessity of existing in external circumstances that work against my survival.” Upon reading this, as well as the rage she felt whilst her partner was giving birth, my initial reaction was to shame Stryker, not for her behavior, but for having the audacity to feel rage in the first place. What right did she have to be anger when to me, she had no reason to be. Despite knowing she is struggling, if I was in the room with her during the birth my initial response would likely be “don’t be angry.” Why? Was it because her anger didn’t feel justified to me, a complete stranger who has no idea of her struggle? Because I felt her anger was a moral failure? Because to me, her anger had no tangible purpose? I honestly am not sure, maybe it was a combination of all of it. But as I sat more on it and reread her letter, I found the need to ask myself, why did I feel this way? Why did I feel the need to scrutinize someone else’s rage? Put in under a microscope to decide if they were allowed to feel it, and I find myself thinking back to this quote: “the necessity of existing in external circumstances that work against my survival.”

“Don’t be mad,” my mother loved to say. Whenever she knew she’d upset me, whenever someone else would openly disrespect me, whenever I was let down, “don’t be mad” was the solution. No comfort. No validation. Just the expectation that I would turn this pesky thing off like a loud, annoying toy. Not because this helped me in anyway, but because it was easier than having to say “that wasn’t okay,” because we can never acknowledge that there’s a problem. When Adichie talks about the danger of a single story, my take away was that regardless of facts, any story becomes truth when enough people believe it. In my eyes, anger has fallen victim of the single story. Anger is programmed into us to protect us, it tells us when we are victims of people, systems, or circumstances that do not want to see us thrive and actively work against us. This story has permeated within humanity so deeply that we have accepted that going against our own nature is the most humane thing we can do. The flippant “it’s a big deal’s,” the sardonic, “you’re blowing things out of proportion’s,” the exasperated groans follows by a “here we go,” treating anger like a defect of the individual because it’s easier than asking ourselves and others:

“What needs to change?”