What Is The Danger Of The Single Story By Adichie

A single stories’ “power is the ability not to just tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person” found in the speech “The Danger of a Single Story” by Chimamanda Adichie. Adichie tells of single stories she has witnessed against others and herself throughout her life, being from Nigeria, coming to a university in America, and traveling throughout her life. Brent Staples’ personal essay “Just Walk on By” provide examples from his own personal experience, of single stories that have been raised against him as an African-American male. Both express how believing in only things heard can demolish truths that have not yet been proven. Single stories may cause not only empowerment, but also a negative stigma to a person, group, or a place. There are many possible dangers that come along with a single story pertaining to the start or continuation of a story heard as well as the act of believing in it. Everyone has been in the same place as Adichie and Staples; been a victim or believed in the oppressors

Popular culture is often a reflection of society; both literature and the media have the capacity to cement ideas in the minds of readers and viewers. In many cases, the notions and stories glorified by the media refrain from sharing a true depiction of society and are narrow-minded in their focus. Recently, the feminist movement has denounced popular culture for its ignorance, fighting for a more realistic portrait to be painted by those with the power to reach millions. Specifically, both Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “The Danger of a Single Story” share how the classic gender stereotypes seen in popular culture are unable to capture the full spectrum of stories that define society, and are limiting in their portrayals of women. Moreover, both authors share personal stories, reference prominent world figures, and cite relevant statistics in their works. Therefore, in both Bad Feminist and “The Danger of a Single Story”, Roxane Gay and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie appeal to readers pathos, logos, and ethos in order to construct the argument that the single story of women in popular culture is stereotypical and restrictive.

We as humans tend to have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. We look for knowledge about everybody and everything that surrounds us from our day-to-day life. Sadly though, we must accept that in the grand scheme of life we (as a society) tend to put pleasure above our quest for knowledge. The pursuit of knowledge tends to take time and energy, two things we call invaluable, and it also shows us things that might depress us. Contrastingly, ignorance takes no time and energy. Also, (as the common saying goes) ignorance is bliss. It keeps ugly truths away from us. But that is no reason to forsake knowledge for ignorance. In the early 1900’s, two books were published that would eventually be referred to the pinnacle of classical literature.

I open up a short story called “The Things They Carried” and begin reading it, feeling never more confused than ever. Its endless military jargon and list of unfamiliar items prompt my urge to skim over the section. As a STEM major, I’m the type of person who likes straightforward, definite answers to questions through a conventional means of achieving them, and I tend to only see something as it appears. I can simply acquire clear cut explanations. Being this way, I initially found no meaningful reason to read literature, as it is obviously unrelated to my studies. However, it’s easy to be delved into too much confusion, and reading opens its doors to many other possibilities: to allow us to empathize and feel again.

Orientalism, as termed by Edward Said, is meant to create awareness of a constellation of assumptions that underlie Western attitudes towards the Eastern societies. While some of these opinions show the cultures in a positive light, the majority of them are biased and emphasise on depicting negative aspects as perceived by strangers to the Eastern culture.

The author of, Why Literature Matters” confidently tries to further spread awareness of the decline in reading and persuade the readers to begin reading. Dana Gioia is passionate to this subject and attempts to appeal to the readers heavily through statistics and potential consequences.

The lecture, “The Danger of a Single Story” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, demonstrates how stereotypes create a single story in people’s minds. She says these stereotypes are half truths because they are incomplete, therefore it keeps people away from the reality. She claims this is “the danger of a single story”, because it stops people to think of others are capable of contributing positively to society. Adichie’s lecture helps one to understand how these stereotypes impact people by creating a single story which changes people’s perception of others. The article, “Michael Brown and Black Men” by Charles M. Blow critiques the “single story” the media tell about young black men. Blow argues how these black mens are shown as “bad people” compared to white people, however, it may not be true because somewhat the media has affected many people in the society to have a single story about others. Blow writes how students of color are suspended more than white students and how Latino and black people are more likely to be searched than white people even though chances are higher for white people to be involved in crimes. Adichie also shares her personal experiences with people through ted talk, how she had “single story” in her mind from what the media had viewed, or from what she had heard from people, but she realized that the whole truth was not there, which results in division.

In her 2009 TED talks presentation,” The Danger of a Single Story,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie explains how a single story presented by the media and books can affect the way a person may perceive others, places, and cultures (Adichie). She goes into details explaining her point through personal experiences where she falsely misunderstood someone based on a single word she heard numerously, and how she was a victim of a common stereotype. According to Adichie, there is never a single story and that people can go through a mental shift of their perspective if they considered various alternatives that differ from the same story that is commonly told.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TedTalk “The Danger of a Single Story” is an effective monologue which highlights our perceived notions as to not always being accurate. When one narrates another’s background with bias information, we paint an unfair picture. The speaker approached the subject with a lighthearted, humorous, and most importantly relatable choice of words. Adichie began her monologue with showcasing a bit of her childhood, and how the books she had read caused a case of “a Single Story”.

The social studies books of middle and high school students may intend to teach a student about the world around them, but the images in these same books seem to perpetuate the stereotypes of different cultures rather than teaching one about these cultures.   The powerful images in these books overshadow the cultures that one can read about in those books.   So too does the television with its programs of poor starving children in African countries with flies blowing their faces and eyes.   These are powerful images and one tends to remember these images and associate them with the country that is referred.

After closely following Chimamanda Adichie's Ted talk regarding "single stories", I have realized a re-occurring topic in the stories we study: Judgement. In the "single stories" talk we know and love, Adichie touches base on why judgments play such a big role in today's society. In this case, not a very positive one. The essence of a single story is to profile others without knowing the context of their situations or actions. An example of this type of judgments relevant to me is the racial profiling of our local secondary schools. Before entering high school, I, along with many of my peers believed we knew everything about the schools we were going to without ever stepping foot in one. Pinetree is dominated by "Asians", while Gleneagle is

In the TED Talk by Chimamanda Adichie, “The Danger of a Single Story,” she describes the dangers of single stories and stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story. In “The Hate You Give” one of the stories going around is that Khalil was a drug dealer for the King Lords. On page 130 King comes to Khalil’s funeral and puts a folded gray bandana across his chest, which symbolizes that he was a King Lord. From that point on everyone ponders on whether or not Khalil was a King Lord or not. In chapter 13 on pages 238 to 239, DeVante tells Starr that King had asked Khalil to join the King Lords, but he had refused. The only reason Khalil did eventually start selling drugs with DeVante was because Khalil’s mom had stolen from King, and he was trying to pay her debt. Khalil was never a King Lord, and the only reason that King had put the bandana on Khalil during his funeral was because he didn’t want people to know that Khalil refused to become a King Lord.

After watching Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie video “The Danger of a Single Story,” and according to the way she used to deliver her idea, I realized that she was fearless and had a high-level knowledge. Adichie used her life experience and emotional examples to drive her audience to an idea of what happens when the same negative one-side story about a group of people or place gets repeated, and letting listeners with no knowledge of the story to create inadequate truths as a result. I used George Eliot’s quote “Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover” because it explains the video’s contents and idea.

Throughout this paper I will be using Edward Said’s definition of Orientalism. Said defines Orientalism as the following:

From the TED Talk video “The Danger of a Single Story,” I think that the speaker Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wanted to tell us that we need to read more and know different stories about one place because there are more than one story exist. We should not judge other without knowing themselves. Furthermore, she said that we should not easily believe everything we heard from media because they only give us one impression. I especially felt close to her when she described how she felt after she realized her American roommate teetered her as African not Nigerian. (4:13) Moreover, she had only a single story about Africa. (4:49) Those paragraph remind me when I was in college in New York, my American classmates did not know the differences between Japanese and Chinese or