In the ted talk “The danger of a single story” by author Chimamanda Adichie she tells us a few of her personal stories about what she calls a single story. Chimamanda Adichie grew up in Nigeria and started reading books when she was around 2 to 4. The books she mostly read were American and British children’s books.
Chimamanda Adichie was also an early writer in which she began at the age of 7 in which she wrote about the books she read. Her characters were white, and they play in the snow and talked about the weather. Chimamanda Adichie characters didn’t resemble herself or her culture as they would drink beers and where she would live there was no snow, and they didn’t talk about the weather. This showed her how vulnerable children are when faced with story. She then discovered writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye which changed her view and caused her to write about the things she was common to. The African writers she discovered changed the way she thought about books and having a single story about them Because before she didn’t know people like her in literature existed.
Chimamanda Adichie would come from a middle-class family and would come from nearby rural villages. When she had turn 8, she would meet Fide who would be there house boy. The only thing her mother would tell her is that Fide was poor. She then would visit his village where she would see a beautiful basket his brother has made and would be startled by the fact; he could make something by the thought of her mother only telling her that Fide and his family was poor because that was the only thing, she can see them as.
She would then move to the United States from Nigeria for college. She meets her American roommate who was shocked by her well-spoken English, music and assumed she didn’t know how to a stove. Her roommate’s single story of Africa was that there were no similarities with her and viewed Africa as a place fighting senseless wars, struggling with poverty and people who were unable to speak for themselves waiting to be saved by a white foreigner. In time Chimamanda Adichie would begin to understand her roommate’s single story of Africa.
I do agree with Adichie’s main argument as there are many one-sided stories that influence the way people view things. I could also relate to her story with her American roommate who had a single story of Africa as I to when younger thought of the same things until learning how it really is living there. The relevance in our day and age is the political conflicts going on today. I believe we have been assigned this reading to understand the ”danger of a single story” and to expand our knowledge and information about things from here on out.
