Hashing an array or object in python 3

I want to hash a simple array of strings The documentation says you can't simple feed a string into hashlib's update() function, so I tried a regular variable, but then I got the TypeError: object supporting the buffer API required error.

Here's what I had so far

def generateHash(data):
    # Prepare the project id hash
    hashId = hashlib.md5()

    hashId.update(data)

    return hashId.hexdigest()