What do you think about Africans? Poor place, food shortage, disease or something else? If so, you may condition “a Single Story.” In the talk “The Danger of a Single Story”, the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie indicated, “Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories.” Adichie tells authentic stories that she has found when people hear a single story about another person or country. The single story could lead to dangerous consequences which make people limit their perspectives, create stereotypes and bias and even cognize things wrongly. “A Single Story” restricts people’s viewpoints about a complex culture and person. We live in a society that is full of diverse information, and news is usually the main information source for people to know unknown things that happened in the world. However, it’s easy to make a single story if …show more content…
One hundred years ago, childbirth was much more dangerous than nowadays. In the book Superfreakonomics, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner indicated, “Nearly 2000 of the mothers, or 1 of every 10, died. In 1847, the situation worsened: 1 of every 6 mothers died from puerperal fever” (134). Doctors had no idea what caused puerperal fever and blame the women. A young doctor, Ignatz Semmelweis began to find the reason and finally, he found that male presence was responsible for the mothers’ deaths because of the remnants of the latest autopsy in the doctors’ hands. Semmelweis said, “None of us know, that we were causing the numerous deaths” (138). Like what Semmelweis thought, many people just focus on a single story – there is no fault of themselves and blame others. This wrong perspective leads doctors to deviate the correct reason and cause thousands of mothers died directly. Therefore, it’s important to avoid “a Single Story” because it will be failing to recognize the truth and lead to a mistaken
Stories are the way humans share, create, and explore their many experiences and identities with each other. When a story is told, the original content lingers depending upon how the storyteller recalls the content. Once the story is retold, it often takes on different details and meanings, because each storyteller adds their own perspective, experience, and meaning. The story then begins to have its own life. Each storyteller has a connection to the beginning and the end of the story.
Stories are a means of passing on information, acting as a medium to transport cultural heritage and customs forward into the future. In his essay titled "You'll Never Believe What Happened," King says that, "The truth about stories is that that's all we are” (King Essay 2). Contained within this statement is a powerful truth: without stories, a society transcending the limitations of time could not exist. Cultures might appear, but they would inevitably die away without a means of preservation. Subsequent generations would be tasked with creating language, customs, and moral laws, all from scratch. In a way, stories form the core of society's existence.
The history of this tragic story begins a little before the actual beginning of “Little Africa”. This story begins after slavery has supposedly ended, but a whole new era of cruelty, inhuman, and unfair events have taken place, after the awful institution of slavery when many of my people were taken from their home, beaten, raped, slaughter and dehumanized and were treated no better than livestock, than with the respect they deserved as fellow man. This story begins when the Jim Crow laws were put into place to segregate the whites from the blacks.
Narratives are an important part of an essay as they create a sense of tone needed to describe a story or situation with ease. If the narrative is not correct, it can leave a false impact on the readers or viewers because it lacks the main tone of the story. Having a perfect narrative can not only enhance a story, but it can also prove evidence. In her essay, “An Army of One: Me”, Jean Twenge provides some of the best examples of how narratives enhance a story and she also emphasizes on how the tone of storytelling matters on the impact that the story would have on its readers or listeners. Apart from Twenge, Tim O’Brien also focuses on how the narrative of the story can help in understanding the truth and falsity of the story in his essay, “How to Tell a True War Story.” In addition to O’Brien, Ethan Watters also emphasizes on the narrative of cultural progress in his essay, “The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan”, when he talks about the anti-depressants to be sold in Japan. All three authors agree to the fact that narrative, the art of telling a story or explaining a situation, has a major impact on the story and on how it is taken by the audience.
In 2009 Chimamanda Adichie gave a TED talk about the ‘danger of a single story’. A single story meaning, one thought or one example of a person becoming what we think about all people that fit that description, a stereotype if you will. In today’s America, I believe that we have all felt the wave of stereotypical views at some point or another. Adichie gives many relatable examples throughout her life of how she has been affected by the single story. Her story brings about an issue that all humans, from every inch of the earth, have come to understand on some level. A young child reading only foreign books, a domestic helper that she only perceived as poor. Her college roommates single story about Africans and her own formation of a single
1. The “danger of a single story” is a ted talk narrated by Chimamanda Adichie, in which she explains the concept of what she appeals as the “single story.” Adichie says, “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” Adichie claims that many individuals view things as what they have been taught or accustomed to. This becomes a problem because not all those things about someone are complete. Her reason for this is that her roommate felt sympathy towards her without having seen her, but simply for knowing that she was from Africa. Adichie’s roommate did not think it was possible that Adichie could live a life similar to that of a middle class American citizen. Just like many other people who here about Africa on the news, her roommate assumed all Africans live in poverty. She also fell victim to this with her friend fides. Adichie’s mother always told stories on how poor his
My response will then focus on the situation of the pregnant woman. Interesting was certainly that pregnant women are still considered as a rather bystander throughout the whole process of pregnancy and birthing. Not only that, some pregnant women identify themselves even as ‘others’ or alienated. Unfortunately, it was not very surprisingly to read that women have almost no autonomy throughout the whole process; especially regarding their body. As societies are built on patriarchal power structures, so is medicine, which excluded women as
The danger of a single story is that you miss out on the full picture. When a single story is told, there are many more stories, beauties, and knowledge that is left out. A single story will put individuals in an ignorant mindset, where they only know what they have been fed. This relevant to my study abroad because there is more to Cape Town, South Africa than one story. The one story mindset eliminates curiosity and the yearn to learn. It is a diminishing and dismissive mindset. We should not have
As you may have noticed, the premise of my short story is similar to the ideas presented in the Ted talk “The Danger of a Single Story.” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi, the speaker of the Ted talk described what happens when complex human beings and situations are reduced to a single narrative (Brooks). For example, many individuals believe that all Africans are extremely poor and are also victims of starvation but in reality, only a certain percentage of Africans fit that description. In my short story, the main character Stevenson, creates a single story about himself and his surroundings. The main difference between my short story and the traditional idea of a single story is that Stevenson is reducing himself down to a single story instead of
During the first quarter of the year in WMST 1172, the most influential reading I read/listened to would be, The danger of a single story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. This is because the idea of the single story proposed by Adichie related and linked to my own personal experiences with stereotypes made by others in the dominated white community I lived in for the first half of my life. Correspondingly, according to Adichie, people who know only one part of the story, not the whole story, create stereotypes. In other words, the stereotypes created are from incomplete stories individuals hear. And although they may be true, they should not be used as a way to define a group of people.
According to the reader the danger of a “single story” is related to how people tend to attribute an image to something regarding to the background information that they have about the thing. In this case having less information or the same information about something is likely to impact on the idea that they will have about something. To support this argument she talked about how during her childhood she used to read book with foreigners characters and about things that she didn’t identify with such as snow and ginger beer. Because of the fact that all her book were similar, she ended up believing that all books have to be same and always include foreign characters with “Blue eyes” and are about things that she couldn’t identify with. Further, she also talks about Fide and how the fact that her mom kept telling her that his family was poor made her think that his family was poor and that it was the only story about them. She couldn’t see them as hard workers or anything else but as poor. Also, she talked about the stereotypes that she had about Mexicans related to immigration in the U.S and how during her trip to Mexico realized that her thoughts were wrong in many ways. Lastly, she talked about her roommate and how she felt pity for her because she was African. Her roommate was surprised to see that she speaks English as well as her and that she knew how to use a stove just because all the information that her roommate has about Africa was a poor conti...
The fact that the scientific perspective [2] has shifted on the subject of human reproduction in no way exonerates science from its male bias. The entire scientific enterprise is at its root an expression of the universal male lust to apprehend and gain control over external reality. The masculine need to project maleness ever further out into the world hints at the motivations behind the overthrow of the homunculus as the active instrument of procreation: plausible deniability. By seeming to involve the woman as an "equal participant" and a contributor of substance to the procreative process, the universal Male Agendum (rape) can be masked behind the veil of necessary female complicity.
This misconception could cause problems such as discrimination. This is a big problem in our multicultural society. In the talk “The danger of a single story”, published in TED.com, Chimamanda Adichie argues that knowing a single story of a person or a country can cause misunderstanding and create stereotypes. She uses the example of when she first came to the US to study. She says that a woman felt sorry about her because she came from Africa, and even ask her if she could listen her tribal music.
Throughout this assignment I learned several things from both the speech and the actual writing portion. While reading the speech “The Danger of a Single Story” by Chimamanda Adichie, I realized that I had an incomplete story about Nigeria, the country in which is author is from. She informed us that English is Nigeria’s official language and that just as the United States has Hollywood, and India has Bollywood, Nigeria also has it own film industry known as Nollywood. I knew English was spoken in Nigeria however, I was not aware that English was it’s official language and I had never even heard about Nollywood. These two simple facts made me see similarities that the U.S. has with
In her TedTalk, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speaks about the issue of having a single story of any place or any people. Single stories result in stereotypes, in negative perceptions, and a complete lack of understanding of the true complexity under the surface. This constantly occurs with Africa, it’s people, and the situations that it faces from colonialism to the Rwandan genocide. Single stories are wrong and should be amended and complex understandings of other groups should be supported. Unfortunately, this rarely happens and we often face the world with simple understandings of other parts of the world. Ethnic complexity is important, integral for change, but the truth is that the so-called ethical paralysis is more common.