In “The Danger of a single story” the author “Chimamanda Adichie” would give her perspective on the way she grew up with reading and writing books outside of where she comes from. The books she knew about and would read about were all American and British, even though she is from eastern Nigeria. Chimamanda Adichie says “I wrote exactly the kind of stories I was reading. All my characters were white and blue-eyed”. This shows that only writing about foreigners was all she read and that there weren’t enough books with characters who look like her. Later on after leaving Nigeria to go to the United States to attend a university. She chocks her American roommate with her accent and was mistaken for not knowing any English. In the text it said ” My American roommate was shocked by me, she asked where I had learned to speak english so well”. The single story showed the stereotypes that many Americans have. Chimamanda Adichie was able to write about what most stories weren’t such as poverty and her Nigerian roots. She loved American and British books, but she learned that there is more than one type of story.
I can understand Chamamanda Adichie and I believe you can only imagine what you see or read is true until you actually live it!. Creating stereotypes based on a person’s background not only can be untrue, but now will be pasted on to others as it stays incomplete from the truth. I think Professor Barnes assigned this to hear our perspectives on singles stories and to help us understand the importance of our society. Like Chamamnda Adichie said “All stores matter” although single stories talks about one side and dangers of the other side being true or not.
