Single Story By Adichie

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Our misconception of a particular race, country or culture often leads us into the danger of not knowing the legitimate truth. These misconceptions are habitually created by our nature of merely eavesdropping any news, stories or feeds and blindly accepting them as the truth. Chimamanda Adichie explains well the extremity of this danger that we are being led by this one-sided belief in “The Danger of the Single Story.” In this well-constructed discourse, Adichie related several examples including those of her own experiences as a child and immigrant to a new country. She recalls how being introduced to books with just white/blue-eyed characters as a child had led her into the misconception that they were the only ones that existed. But things …show more content…

In the same way, we are “just as guilty in the question of the single story”, as Adichie declares. We are guilty of holding our judgements based on the outward appearance and mere stories that we have heard about a particular country, race or culture. Sometimes, we are so ignorant that we don’t even care to challenge ourselves to know the actual truth. Rather, we decide to remain under the delusion of the very slanted one-sided story that we consider the truth. For instance, Asian Americans are believed to be stereotypical math geniuses which might not be completely untrue as they are. However, it doesn’t mean that you should be born in Asia to be a math genius. I have also had friends who struggled in math despite of being from the same continent. The general conception of being an Asian failed here. Although, the rumors of them being geniuses might not be completely untrue, they don’t apply to everyone. They are just not complete as Adichie mentions, “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with the stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only …show more content…

In relation to this, I would like to use the example of my own experiences of my early days in the United States. In a way, my story is very similar to that of Adichie’s. I was born and raised in a refugee camp in Nepal. My parents had lived in Nepal for almost 20 years after the political instability that occurred in Bhutan, a very small country sandwiched between India and China. Life in camp was miserable and lacked the resources that many people would consider basic essentials. We lived up to basic food and resources provided by the United Nations. Every day was another struggle and set of challenges to survive. Coming from such a background in the United States, my teachers did not expect me to do well in school. I was definitely and stereotypically perceived to do poorly in school. And this wasn’t untrue, as my school had students from the same background as mine and did poorly in all of their classes. My teachers were, however, surprised and astonished by everything that I accomplished in such a short interval of time. Despite being from such a background, unlike other kids my age, I had moderately educated parents who put me through school and provided me opportunities to learn English although it was merely taught and discussed in the camp schools. I did really well in my studies. Adding to it, I practiced news reporting and journalism outside of school that helped me further sharpen my

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