The Danger of a Single Story- Sydney Gray

     For this week’s class we had to watch the TED talk, The Danger of a Single Story, by the Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Adichie introduces her talk by telling the audience that she is going to tell a few personal stories. She wants the audience to view her as a storyteller so that they can prepare themselves to be able to better visualize the details and information she is about to give in a story-format. Most of her pieces of writing were made from her imagination, they didn’t necessarily mimic her real life experiences, so this method allowed her audience to also use their imagination. She started the TED talk by explaining her background and where she is from, which is Nigeria. She then goes more into detail about how her writing was made from her imagination, which were about white kids with blue eyes playing in the snow, eating apples, and talking about weather changes. Since she was from Nigeria, she never actually experienced cold weather or foods such as apples. She then goes on with explaining that she is middle class and her parents have both done well for themselves and their family. This leads to another part in the story about a boy named Fide who was very poor. Adiche says how her and her family would always help him out by bringing him clothes and extra food. Moral of the story is that all she saw in him was that he was poor and never looked past this fact, she never thought that they could be talented or have anything more. There are various ways that a single story can be dangerous. In the story above, Fide was perceived as poor and that is all that Adiche thought of him. She did not think there was anything more to the boy and his family other than being poor. This single story ultimately hurt the view of the overall “poor” group of people, or members of the lower class. Another single story Adiche mentioned was of her American roommate. Her roommate made a comment about Adiche’s English, not knowing that English was Nigeria’s national language. Her roommate felt sorry for her and then also tried bonding with her over tribal music. Overall, this story had the same issue as the story about the boy named Fide. Her roommate stereotyped Africans and people from Nigeria in a negative way and in a result it ending up hurting the whole group of people. Adiche grew up in a middle-class household, with food on her table and two parents who loved her and always made sure she had clothes to wear. However, her roommate felt sorry for her only because she was African.

    African authenticity is basically the idea of almost stereotypes. Adiche mentions this in the story of her professor when he implies that because they drove cars, weren’t starving, and had a roof over their head that they were not “authentically African”. The professor simply did not believe that there was any way that an African could be even remotely similar to him. He negatively stereotyped Africans. The power of language can change the view of different countries or regions. Adiche makes a point about this basically saying that if all she knew about Africa was from images, she would also assume that it was a place of endless wars, people dying of poverty, and AIDS. She would assume that they are all waiting to be saved by a “white foreigner”. This is how Americans stereotypically view Africans. The power of language can distort the way that the world views a specific area.

    The constitution and some laws in Mali do support equality between men and women. However, women’s access to employment and to economic and educational opportunities is limited. This is a huge issue in their country and could be a factor in why they are always experiencing violence and chaos.