Reflection of Chimamanda Adichie’s “The Danger of a Single Story”
Chimamanda Adichie, a Nigerian born woman in her TED talk “The danger of a single story” presents about the hazard of understanding history and life through a single narrative. She discusses how the stories she wrote as a child were influenced by the stories she read as a child and the strong impression that stories have on children. Her reading of foreign book, led her to perceive stories as having containing white characters. Later on she discovered books written by Africans, about Africans that taught her that “people like me could exist in literature.”
Human being, I believe live at the level of narrative stories. Our minds and understandings need shortcuts in understanding the world around us. This is where we get clichés of generalizations, which tell a single story. There is a single story for Africans, Americans, Canadians, etc., even though these are national labels applies to millions of individuals who have not just a national identity but a personal and family identity which they likely feel supersedes whatever national identity they happened to be born with.
Outsiders of cultures, those who are not part of a “story” of another people, must without judgment in order to truly gain understanding. Every label and stereotype applied to a people or person comes from something, whether it be media, advertisers, fiction of film. I think that by understanding the source of these labels, allows us to say something like, “I believe Mexicans like burritos, not necessarily because all Mexicans like burritos but because popular culture and media has presented this story of Mexico.” Taking the time to reflect on where our short stories of places come from is the beginning to understanding the long story.
