Adichie's Tetalk

Rich's essay can also be related to Adichie's TedTalk that was held in 2009 on The Danger of a Single Story, where Adichie gives a compelling account by telling personal stories of how being unaware of location can produce harmful stereotypes of others. Adichie says that you create a single story you "show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become" (TS). One story Adichie tells that relates particularly well to Rich's essay is when Adichie gives an account of when she came to the U.S. for university and her American roommate stereotyped her, as a poor African who never had the opportunity to experience first world luxuries such as stoves and American music. Adichie says "My roommate had

Adichie visited Mexico when there was large media coverage in the U.S. of illegal border crossing she held the stereotype that Mexicans were people who leeched off of healthcare, and constantly snuck and were arrested crossing the border (5:09). However, she was pleasantly surprised when saw Mexicans enjoying the marketplace and working hard. Adichie says that she "realized that I had been so immersed in the media coverage that they had become one thing in my mind: the abject immigrant" (5:54). This goes along with a point that both Rich made in her essay that there is a danger in using the word "always." Rich argues that "always' blots out what we really need to know: When, where, and under what conditions has the statement been true" (214)? Adichie and her white roommate had heard of stories of people from certain locations that were not their own and assumed the stereotypes or stories of those locations always held true. On the topic of stereotypes, Adichie says, "The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story"