The Danger Of A Single Story By Chimamanda Adichie

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Chimamanda Adichie, a brilliant woman who grew up in Nigeria, shares her stories and thoughts on literature and how it’s presented. In this speech, Adichie perceives the “Danger of a Single Story” as a perspective on human beings, places and situations from a single narrative. She shares her ideas on what happens when we only get to hear one story at a particular situation. She shows that the problem with this is that when we see these single stories we are accepting one narratives truth as the entire truth. For example, she mentions how when she first came to the United States, her roommate already had a sense of pity for her, thinking that, “Africa was a single story of catastrophe, dying poverty and senseless wars”. With this being said, …show more content…

She talks about a personal story when she was younger and her family got a new house boy named Fide. The only thing she heard about him was through her mother, who told her his family was incredibly poor. That’s why she was shocked and ashamed when she went to his house and saw that his mother could make beautiful baskets, since she couldn’t see them as anything else but poor. This is because she let that rumour impair her judgement, causing her to be resistant to hearing anything different. The main danger of a single story is that it causes stereotypes and stigmas towards people, places or situations. Adichie looks at it that we as humans are all guilty of stereotypes, whether it’s intentional or not. They are all around at school, work and follow people for the rest of their lives, causing so much negativity and judgement. Everyone tends to believe the first thing they see or hear, because they don’t get to observe multiple sides of stories or they don’t even bother to listen. This comes into play when we are exposed to one sided narratives which destroys the way we see the world and the people within …show more content…

Adichie states in the speech, “The problem with the single story is that it creates stereotypes and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue but that they are incomplete. They make one story become only one story”. In the end as her overall point she declares, “The consequence of the single story is this. It robs people of their dignity”. This statement proves that people don’t always look at both sides like they should and the concept of the single story strips us of our knowledge/identities, leaving us with cultural misunderstanding worldwide. As well as how much power and control a narrative can have over a single story. Adichie shows at the end about what kind of peace you can feel when you realize that there is no such thing as a single story and that words cannot describe somebody's identity, culture and life by saying, “When we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a type or

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