In a speech called “ The Danger of a Single Story “ spoken by a Nigerian writer named Chimamanda Adichie on a show called “ TEDTalk “, Adichie teaches us how an unfinished story can cause people to see a place or person one way. These unfinished stories can cause the audience to believe in a specific fact, and the viewers will take this particular fact and make this the full story, creating a stereotype in the process. Adichie Speech shares with us the stories of her childhood, which starts with Adichie reading foreign white character books but then learning these white character books weren’t the only books available in the world. Adichie learned this by discovering writers who share similar events to her actual life. Reading foreign books is what started her first stereotype because as a writer, she was using white characters in her writings because that’s all she knew and these foreign books were all that were available. Adichie later discovered more ways people were using single stories, which she realized misinterpreted many things. Adichie used an example where she used a stereotype against someone because of something she heard and later found out it wasn’t the full story but the only story she heard was an incomplete version of it
I agree with Chimamanda Adichie’s argument that unfinished stories can cause people to tell versions of a story and make it seem like a fact when in reality it could have been half true but not complete. I have believed some single stories myself, so I can relate to Adichie’s argument. I assumed that the people living in Mexico were all poor and I believed everywhere in Mexico was dangerous because that’s what I saw in the news and my parents told me something similar, But when I visited Mexico around the time I was 11, that idea was partially right but also not completely. I saw people work and live regular lives, and I was traveling to different states in Mexico without an issue, but some places are too dangerous for us to go to, and there are some places where people are struggling financially. But you mostly don’t hear about the good things that happen in Mexico; it’s mostly always negative. The relevance of the danger of a single story in our day and age is that people judge others on what they believe are facts, but these so-called facts are most likely a small part of a story. People will take single stories and use them in a culture and think they are defining them, but they are just using a stereotype against them. I think Professor Barnes assigned this reading because she wanted to teach us what a single story is, and I think she would like us to use more detail in our writing so people can get a full story and not an unfinished one.
