Significance of Stories in ‘The Danger of a Single Story’ (Essay Sample)

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Significance of Stories in ‘The Danger of a Single Story’
‘The Danger of a Single Story’ was a TED Talk delivered by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a young Nigerian author in 2009. Her unique and influential speech highlights the problematic nature of a single story which acts as the foundation of negative generalization and incomplete truth. According to Adichie, a single story is a one-dimensional story that forces a story to be the only story. Her primary argument is that when only one story is told, it becomes a stereotype about a group of different people. While it might not be entirely false, it never provides a complete picture of something.
She recollects her own experience with stories and the profound impact it had on her as an individual. Growing up, having read only British books with foreign characters, Adichie describes the difficulty of being unable to relate to those characters. As a child, she believes that women or girls of color do not exist in books. She is thankful for the knowledge those British books imparted but as she branches out and starts reading the books of African writers, she is saved from “having a single story of what books are”.
Adichie narrates several incidents from her life that emphasize the key message behind her speech. The stories report how other people viewed her and how she viewed other people because both parties knew only one story that has made them prejudiced and judgmental about a group of people. Growing up Adichie fails to recognize that there is more to her houseboy other than poverty because that’s all she has ever heard about him while Adichie’s roommate in college fails to realize that Nigeria is more than just a land of catastrophe.
“So that is how to create a single story, show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.” (Adichie)
In a humorous manner, Adichie accentuates the critical misunderstanding and negative generalization that stems from a single story by reflecting on a statement from an American student. She claims that Nigerian men are abusive