Adichie's The Danger Of A Single Story

These single stories that, in turn, construct a vast amount of stereotypes in regards to the millions of varieties of humans, are ever-so extrusive in the novel, Americanah. Ifemelu tells a mesmerizing story encapsulating various themes most authors are able to tiptoe by but never focus on. Some of my favorite most memorable stories occur during the time Ifemelu is first introduced to full-fledged America, such as the absolute inability to refer to black people as black, the constant need to express unadulterated sympathy for all of the African countries regardless of their economic or political status, and the blatant association of a foreign accent with stupidity.

“A widely held fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing,” is the definition of a stereotype. More than often people use stereotypes to describe or make fun of other cultures without fully knowing the effects they may have on the other. Jaswinder Bolina an American poet from Chicago,Illinois, whom received many degrees in creative writing had the liberty of not living the difficult life that his parents, who are from Bolina Doaba, Punjab, went through. Expressing what it was like to be an outcast when they came to America to start a new life together, Bolina’s father tries to give him the American dream by putting him in many white schools helping him further his education so he can fit in where they were seen as outcast. Throughout Bolinas article, “Writing Like a White Guy” he expresses his experiences and educates his readers of his many struggles in what is considered a white-based society that is filled with stereotypes telling you what you should look and talk like in order to be a successful American. This often leaves people to reject their native culture, constantly having to prove themselves and give white people an upper hand in many situations.

Adichie’s characters are subject to cultural suppression in several of the short stories. This is most pronounced in ‘The Arrangers of Marriage’ where Chinaza is forced by her husband to assimilate to her new surroundings by ridding herself of all signs of being Nigerian,

According to Adichie, since the childhood, she was a victim of single story consequences. Her first false conception was caused by the children books, all of which is from American and Britain, filling up characters with totally different features, behaviors and “things which I could not personally identify” (1:43). This used to make she think that there would be no literature for the people like her. However, she got out of this perception when finding out other African authors and books. The second misconception is about Fide’s family when she turned eight. She knew nothing about Fide’s family except their poverty by keeping listening to the single story about them through

Addressing cultural stereotypes can be an extremely difficult task for many individuals, especially when the individuals themselves are being stereotyped. Sherman Alexie’s short story “Flight Patterns” brings about new ideas in regards to Native American Indian people. The main character who is a man William, completely contradicts the stereotype of the typical Indian individual. Although William defies the stereotype of the typical Native American individual he is guilty himself of giving other groups of people stereotypes as well. There are many times in Alexie’s “Flight Patterns” when common preconceptions are both questioned and answered through the thorough examination of the cultural stereotypes in the short story, the thorough discussions that take place between characters, and the

My room-mate had a single story of Africa; a single story of catastrophe”. Adichie also tells how growing up in Nigeria reading only American and English children’s books made her deaf to her authentic voice. As a child, she wrote about such things as blue-eyed white children easting apples, thinking brown skin and mangos had no place in Literature. That changed as she discovered African writers.

Culture plays a huge part in how people are raised, and their perspective of the world we live in. Everyone sees the world differently based on their beliefs. The author of “Speak” (by Laurie Halse Anderson), show Melinda’s culture through rhetoric techniques such as imagery, allusion, and tone. The author uses imagery to show Melinda’s culture by using how she views certain rooms or areas in her eyes.

Many stereotypes that address different types of people exist today. Stereotypes are popular, fixed, and oversimplified ideas that are typically associated with particular demographics. These ideas can be viewed negatively or positively. Stereotypes may foster or perpetuate misconceptions about some demographics. In the poems, “My Mother, If She Had Won Free Dance Lessons” and “The Cab Driver Who Ripped Me Off,” both written by Cornelius Eady, contain characters who are susceptible to misconceptions and prejudices due to their personal experiences.

In Junior’s story the Indians of his community assumed to not attend college or better educated schools. The aspiring boy tells us, “But we reservation Indians don’t get to realize our dreams. We don’t get those chances. Or choices. We’re just poor. That’s all we are” (13). The quote expresses that the stereotypes put upon Indians have held them back. Once a group falls victim to the stereotypes given to them, they not only begin to expect the insults but believe that the myths are true. Regardless, some victims are held by their stereotypes and give in. They let go of their dreams and expect nothing, just like the fabricators who created the lies. Our author, Alexie, is living proof that stereotypes do not define a person. As an Indian from a reservation, Alexie not only graduated from high school, but attended college and followed his dream to be an artist. He passes on his story and his message through his book and hopes that others will defy their stereotypes and

This is a powerful statement to the impact stereotypes can have on a person’s life (Alexie, 12). “Given the chance, my father would have been a musician” (Alexie, 13). Moreover, Junior shows how stereotypes can differ from within a culture to the rest of society. This is done by showing how he is treated at Reardon and how he is treated on the reservation. Penelope is a powerful example of this, she seems to only be with Junior at times because he is Native American and shows that ignoring someone is not the only way to play into stereotypes (Alexie, 113).

The first example of this is when the narrator is stopped by the police and they said “You’re making people nervous. You don’t fit the profile of the neighborhood." (Alexie). Right after this the narrator is talking about how he is unable to fit into anywhere because of how the culture views native Americans. This is an excellent example of how the culture around the narrator has changed how he thinks about others within his culture.

It becomes more and more difficult to understand someone when you believe fallacies of that individual. In her Ted Talk "The Danger of a Single Story", Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie describes a personal experience of when the single story led her to a false interpretation of someone. Adichie explains, "It had not occurred to me that anybody in his family could actually make something. All I heard about them was how poor they were... Their poverty was my single story of them" (3:50-4:09).

In the speech, the Danger of a Single Story the writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie tells us the dangers of believing just one thing about a stereo type. In the speech Adichie repeats the phrase ‘single story’ as I think it is very important to her and by saying it repetitively she gets it to stick in peoples minds. I think the main point of the speech is to tell people the dangers of believing just one story about a country, a person or a religion etc. and to see past the stereotype we can be tricked into believing and instead see past it to see for example the person for who they are, for example, she as an eight year old girl believed a single story about their houseboy, Fide she says, ‘The only thing my mother told us about him was that his family was very poor... when I didn’t finish my dinner, my mother would say, “Finish your food! Don’t you know? People like Fide’s family have nothing.” So I felt enormous pity for Fide’s family. Then one Saturday we went to his village to visit, and his mother showed us a beautifully patterned basket made of dyed raffia that his brother had made. It had not occurred to me that anybody in his family could actually make something. All I had heard about them was how poor they were, so that it had become impossible for me to see them as anything else but poor.’ This was her single story of Fide’s family, because all her mother had told her was that they were poor she did not see past that and had no idea that anyone poor was capable of creating something so beautiful.

The text “The danger of a single story” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie illustrates how stereotypes affect people lives. The progress of the author as a storyteller occurred respectively when she was a child and after she grew up. When she was a little girl, she became an early writer but all she had read was a single story about foreign, she wrote exactly the kinds of stories she was reading. So she ever had narrow minds about foreigners, but after she grew up, the more American and British books she read, the more knowledge she got and learned more things that she never know. The book stirred her imagination, not only she dispelled her stereotypes but she also had a new cognize about outside world.

Women of power are everywhere, in every country across the globe, and they all have their own stories. Adichie tells stories of strong women in all of her stories in The Thing Around Your Neck, who are all in unique different situations, but are connected through their ties to Nigeria. As either locals in Nigeria, or immigrants from Nigeria, the women portrayed in the stories have rituals and restrictions that connect their characters-even when their story takes place across the globe from one another. Through these stories, Adichie is able to convey struggles of cultural expectations, how women are affected by men in these situations, and how women are affected by their relationships with other women. Chimamanda Adichie represents these women as strong human beings, showing their unique struggles they face with gender throughout many of her short stories.