In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s speech “The Danger of a Single Story”, Chimamanda talks to us about how having one perspective or seeing only one side of a story can cause harmful misleading information to be taken as fact. In the speech Adichie recounts times in her life where she either experienced being a single story or put someone in that category. One of the first times the speaker remembered experiencing a single story was when she was younger in Nigeria. In Nigeria the speaker was only able to consume books about white English children leading to her to believe those were the only types of book there were. That was until she discovered authors that wrote about experiences she could actually relate to which opened her horizons. Based on her life experiences she gathered that single stories were the result of only being feed information that was incomplete or misunderstood. Adichie makes the point that having the power to make any information about certain groups or individuals “true” is the danger of a single story.
I agree with Adichie’s main argument and can relate to parts of her speech. Like Adichie, when I was younger I never saw a glimpse of me anywhere in media. Growing up as an Afro-Latina I didn’t see a lot of my culture in media and shows. All the shows, books, movies I grew up with either only talked about white people in America or cartels in Mexico. This caused not only me but also my younger brother to just accept that we had to be either Mexican or just white. Anytime we imagined ourselves or created characters to represent us they always had big blue eyed and the brightest blond hair, which is the furthest from the truth. We were confused on who or what we were and this lead to more misconceptions in the future. The dangers of a single story is still very relevant in our day and age and still affect a lot of cultures and groups. Everyday news outlets broadcast the worst parts of the world to consumers everyday. Showing people the downsides and negative aspects of other people only makes whatever misconception they already had prior become instilled in their brain. Still to this day many people believe immigrants as unclean job stealing aliens instead of fellow human beings. I think Professor. Barnes assigned this speech to the class to open our eyes to other perspectives. Although we may not have realized it but we have probably experienced or created a single story, so now that we understand what a single story is we can utilize it.
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Hi Yaydey, I agree with you that news outlets always broadcast the worst parts of the world to readers. When I try to read today’s New York Time articles, I noticed that there are about political and war. It is showing too much negative aspects. I really want to read or listen some happy news on daily. The negative news from the same place which make me have stereotypes for a group or place. Besides, from reading your childhood story, it reminds me my childhood experience. When I was a kid, I only can see barbie doll from Western, which are all blond hair, white skill color. I thought all barbie dolls are these styles, until I saw difference version of barbie. When I was a kid, I never to double that why the barbie doll doesn’t look like me. I think I leaned what the danger of single story until I read this article and watch this video.