Summary of the lesson 'The Danger of a Single Story'

The Danger of a Single Story (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)   The Nigerian writer and orator, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie introduces herself to be a story teller, and she wants to tell a few personal stories about what she likes to call “The Danger of a Single Story”. She was born and brought up in a Nigerian middle class family. Her father was a professor and mother was an administrator.   She started reading books at an early age of four and started writing stories with crayon illustrations at the age of seven. She read mostly American and British children’s books, which created a single story in her mind about books. She believed that books by their nature should have foreign characters in them and the books should deal with subject matters with which the writer should not have a personal relation. But she realised the mistake when she could read books by African writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye.  When she read African books, she realized that girls like her with kinky hair and chocolate coloured skin could also be characters in books.    She had a single story about Fide, their house boy. She believed that he and his family had only poverty in life and did not have any other abilities. Once she visited his house and found beautifully patterned baskets of dyed raffia made by his brother. Then she realised that her single story about Fide and his family was wrong. When she was 19, she went to America to continue her university studies. Her American roommate had a single story about Africa.  She believed Africa was only a land of beautiful landscape and all Africans were poor and uneducated tribal people.  The roommate did not know English was Nigeria’s official language, and she was shocked to hear Adichie’s excellent English.     Adichie’s American professor also had a single story about Africa. He believed that Adichie’s characters were not authentically African. In his single story, African authors’ characters should be uneducated and starving; they should not be educated and rich enough to drive cars.  Though Adichie had a happy childhood in a close-knit family, she had also some painful life experiences.  Her grandfathers died in refugee camps. Her cousin Polle died due to lack of enough medical care. Her closest friend Okoloma died in a plane crash.     Finally Adichie says in her speech that single stories create stereotypes, and the stereotypes are not untrue, but they are incomplete. They make a single story the only story.