"The Danger of a Single Story" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The video “The Danger of a Single Story” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a description of the concept of a single story that is many times seen through literature and media. The author is interested in knowing more about this concept and how it impacts people, culture, and standards. Through this idea, the author shows the audience that judgmental and biased problems arise when a person encounters a single story about another person, culture, or country, other than their own, and how these single stories are incomplete and do not define reality.

The author created her study through analyze of literature from various authors such as the western John Locke, Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti, and American writer Alice Walker. Her study reflects her own experiences such as her trip to Guadalajara, Mexico where she realized that she had engaged as a single story thinker about Mexico. Another experience she used was when the author moved from Nigeria to the United States to enter university. The author experienced the concept of single story when her roommate had an established idea of the author as poor and uneducated (knowing the author was from Nigeria) before meeting each other. The limitations of the study are in the examples the author gives. The author quotes some literature writers and shows proof through her experiences but these sources come from ideals and not from physical data or facts. On the other hand, the nature of the video does not necessarily require hard facts to prove the author’s point.

The video finishes with a thought: “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.” (Adichie, 2009) The author learns that no single story is detailed enough to tell the truth about a place. Single stories do not give the full experience of a place, but in contraire, they cover beauty and reality.

I agree with the author’s point of view about single stories because stereotyping is a problem everyone is faced with everyday. It is a problem that makes people be something they are not. As we come to our next assignment, one should approach the topic unbiased, not thinking about the overall idea society has on that issue, but one should dig deeper to discover unseen ideas and get new perspectives on the issue.

Bibliography

Adichie, C. N. (2009, October). Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story. Retrieved September 22, 2012, from TED Ideas worth spreading: http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html