Summary
“The Danger of a Single Story” is a TEDTalk speech given by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, where she gives a recollection of her life that all point towards the danger of a single story. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up on a university campus in eastern Nigeria. Growing up, Chimamanda was into reading and writing. The type of books that she would read were British and American children’s books. She took what she learned in these books and incorporated them into her writing. All of her characters were white and blue-eyed. Since all she read were these types of books, she became convinced that books had to have foreigners, and had to have things that she herself cannot personally identify with. This was until she discovered African books. After discovering African books, she realized that people like her can also exist in the world of literature. The discovery of African writers saved her from having a single story of what books are. Chimamanda continues on saying that there are single stories in real life as well. She had a single story of Fide, a new house boy that worked for her parents. She thought that he and his family were just poor, until she realized that it didn’t occur to her at the time that anybody in his family can actually make something. It was impossible for her to see them as anything else but poor, and their poverty was her single story of them. Chimamanda’s college roommate had a single story of Chimamanda, as her roommate thought Chimamanda did not English, did not know how to use a stove, etc. Her roommate had a single story of Africa, as she thought that there was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way. Chimamanda had a single story of Mexicans, as she read on media coverages that Mexicans were just immigrants. After all this, Chimamanda ends with this thought, “That when we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.”
Response
I agree with Chimamanda’s main argument when she states that we should reject single stories and come to the realization that single stories robs so much from us. Single stories creates stereotypes, and although stereotypes are not completely untrue, but they are incomplete. It makes one story the only story. The consequence of a single story is that it robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult, and it simply emphasizes how different we are rather than how we are similar. It is hard to recognize the false narrative we’ve been used to seeing or hearing, but once we break that down, we are exposed to the true reality. In our days now, we still see things like this happen, and we often blinded by it, especially when it comes to media coverage. Professor Barnes assigned this reading to us so that we can see how literature has an immense amount of power and how much it can influence us. It’s also to bring awareness to single stories, and how they can be dangerous.
