Good Example Of Essay On The Single Story

The single story has become a quite obvious thing in the media, in people's understanding and in history. I was not at all shocked with the introduction of the single story. Why is the single story always told? This is the question that clicked in my mind. Well, I presume that it is because it makes the most headlines and most impact especially when it come stop some countries. Furthermore, some of the countries are better told in a single story since they are considered inferior to others. Why is the West regarded as more superior to other countries to the point that any other person, especially people of color are considered inferior? Again I presume that it is the effect of the single story which has been told from time immemorial. However, the single story can only be described as one side of the coin.
Chimamanda Ngozi starts off by narrating her own story on how she started reading and writing at an early age. Many of the stories she wrote greatly revolved around the characters she was reading in the novels despite the fact that her cradle was in Nigeria. This demonstrates the degree of vulnerability of people especially when it comes to foreigners and as a writer, she had to find an affiliation with African literature. However, reading foreign books broadened the scopes of reasoning. Blending this aspect with African literature, it drew her to the fact of not relying on the single story. The fact that the single story is most often told started her when she went to study in the United States. She narrates that her roommate looked at her in a manner that Africans had no connection with her as equals and this proved to her that her roommate relied on the single story. That was the heart of the matter, Africa was depicted as a continent which was ravaged by war and diseases such as AIDS and as a result, a negative attitude had already created in her mind. On another occasion, the speaker narrates that the characters in her novel were not authentically African. In his reasoning, her characters were driving vehicles and not starving. Simply because all these individuals have is the single story. Another practical example of the single story as told by the narrator is depicted when she visited Mexico. It is here that she realized that Mexico is not all about the illegal immigrants. Power and the single story are two words that go simultaneously. “Power is not only the ability to tell the story of another person, it is the ability to make the story definitive of that particular person”. The single story creates a totally different story. If there was a way in which the other side of the story would be written or narrated, then the mainstream thinking of the single story would be curbed.
Some of these ideas relate to me in a rather personal manner because for quite a long time, I have been exposed to only one side of the story, “the single story”. Without the questions of why does this happen, when did it happen, are there other things that happened that are on the positive side? Most of the time especially in the media, we are only exposed to the negative news and information. Taking a particular example of the continent of Africa, history shows us that Africa was only good for providing slaves in the transatlantic slave trade. On the other hand, Britain and America were viewed as the main suppliers of food, cotton, and guns. What does this tell us? Were there not farms in Africa that could yield food and crops? The single story told to us doesn’t tell us so.
The ideas presented in this speech relate directly to the current issues especially when the media narrates it to us. The information we are fed with is mostly the single story. Take a practical example of the war in Syria. What we are told and shown are bombs blowing up and grenades detonating combined with lethal firepower. That is just the single story. What about the other side of the story where the military intervenes with the help of other military groups? Why isn’t the focus placed on this side of the story? In conclusion, as Ngozi puts it, a story can be used to empower and bring back humanity. Rejecting the logic and thinking of a single story gives us the power of creating the paradise we intend to have.