The Danger of a Single Story

Chimamanda Adichie talks about the danger of the single story and how we portray what we are exposed to from a single perspective. She talks about how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story, especially as children. Single stories can have unintended consequences, as they can suppress certain groups or cultures and form prejudices. Adichie emphasized how media and western books usually tell one story, which makes people make generalize information and make assumptions about certain people, cultures or places. 

She gave examples about the single story that people have about Africa, addressing it as a country and making assumptions that people there are not living a civilized life; she put herself in the shoes of a person living in America, never travelled to Africa nor met a person from there and only being exposed to what they are reading about Africa and she understood how they would form these assumptions from that single story.  She gave another example of the perception that she had about Mexicans from the stories in the media or movies, how Mexicans are perceived to be abject immigrants and always escaping from the borders, but when she actually went to Mexico and saw how the people and live there, she find that this is not true and there are many other stories that were untold. 

"To create a single story, you show people as only one thing over and over , and that is what they become", she said. She emphasized the importance of power and how it is not only the ability to tell the story of another person, but to  make it the "definitive story of that person". There are also many versions of the single story and the way you start the story makes the story different, so the writer or speaker is the one who controls what he wants people to perceive based on what he focuses on in the story. 

She reflects on how many stories in her life made her who she is, but one shouldn't focus on only the  negative stories, to do that "is to flatten her experience and overlook the many other stories that formed her,"she said. To truly understand someone and be engaged with them, it is important to learn all the stories of that person. A single story does not allow us to see what we have in common and how similar we are, rather it focuses only on how we are different. 

She ends her speech by saying,"When we reject the single story and realize there is never a single story about a place, we regain a kind of paradise". 

The purpose of this talk is to show how important it is to understand the different angles and different stories about anything, whether a person or place or concept, because if we only hear a single story about a person or place, this can lead to misunderstandings, stereotypes and judgements or decisions based on incorrect or  incomplete information. Stereotypes make that one story become the only story about the person and that is also unfair.  It shows that it is important to be exposed to many things, so that you can have a broad understanding of different perspectives. A single story means hearing a story from one perspective or one angle, without learning the other perspectives. We must look at both sides, to have a balance of stories. 

I can personally connect with this, as people who don't know the different stories in my life or different roles I play, could judge my character on only one single story they see. Even though I am only 17 years old, but I have many stories that define my character, whether about the sport I play, my team and my life at the club which I consider my home, or stories about how I was raised and my family and who I am there, or stories with my school friends and the different groups I have within that place. If a person would only look at one part of my life, which a single story, they would form a judgement on my character based on that part of my life only, which is incomplete as I have many other stories and many other roles that I play, which show different angles of my character, that only people who know all my stories would understand. Another example where i personally learned from is when I travelled to Russia. I was around 10 years old, but before that trip, the perception I had about Russia, was from American movies where Russians are always the bad people and were always part of a mafia, with a specific accent and were cold blooded, however when I went to Russia and dealt with the people there, I found that they were actually normal people like us, living the same and going through the same daily routines that we all do. 

You shouldn't take everything you read or hear from one perspective as a fact or generalize an idea about a person or place or form an opinion based on a single story of that person or place. A single story should not define a group of people, nor should it define that person either, because there is never a single story about someone or a place. People have many stories that define their character and makes them who they are, so if you really want to know a person or a place, you should explore all the stories about them to make a proper judgement.