Gabriel Oshman- Converstation 2

“The Danger of a Single Story” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a
talk the author gave back in 2009 for TEDTalk. She talks about what the concept
of having a single story about a person or place is with various examples
throughout her life. She starts by giving an example from her childhood living
in Nigeria. As her parents were middle class and academics, she had access to
many books which she started reading from a young age. She talks about their
affect on her perception of the world. All of the books she read as a child
were by and about white, western European authors so she believed that was all
there was to express in literature even if she couldn’t relate to them. While
she would eventually find successful African writers to read and love just as
much as the white authors she grew up with, this first story highlights the
ubiquity of western authors around to the world to the point that other voices
that people, outside of that specific sphere, or single story, might relate to
more.

Adichie goes on to give more examples of how having misconceptions about other
people based on single stories starting with Fide, a boy who worked in her home
as a child. Fide was poor and until she one day visited his home, knew nothing
else about him. She didn’t know he and his family had rich lives and could do
other skills such as basket weaving. She only saw him as a poor person and this
exposure helped humanize him.

Later in life, once Adichie comes to the United States, she experiences
someone, her college roommate, having a single story about her as an African,
something she would not consciously identify as until leaving her home. Her roommate
assumed, because she was Nigerian, that she didn’t know how a stove worked or
that all she listened to was “tribal music” when yes, she knew how a stove
worked, and listened to Mariah Carrey, not “tribal music.”

Even as an adult, Adichie isn’t immune to having negative perceptions of
groups of people. When traveling to Guadalajara, Mexico, after hearing stories
about refugees at the border and how they were fleeing crime and being
arrested, she came to see them as just a suffering mass not as the people they
so clearly were when she was seeing them face to face.

Adichie’s experiences with Fide, her roommate and her impressions of Mexico
highlight a lack of humanization that comes with having a simplistic and that
incorrect stories about someone or a group of people can make it so creating a
connection with people who are not like you is extremely difficult.

I do agree with Adichie’s main argument about it being difficult and harmful
if we are not able to humanize people around us and only believe the simple
narratives we are told. I think this talk is still extremely relevant in a
time when we consume so much media that tries to deliver stories as efficiently
as possible, we are constantly hearing single stories about wars, people, or neighborhoods
and often accepting them without doing much research of our own. I think it’s
important we listen to this talk so that we can be mindful of unconscious biases
or ideas we might have and that whatever arguments we make in our writings for
this class and the rest of our careers academic or otherwise, are more thoughtful.