The danger of a single story

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The danger of a single story

Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice - and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.

Inspired by Nigerian history and tragedies all but forgotten by recent generations of westerners, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novels and stories are jewels in the crown of diasporan literature. Listen to the talk and answer the following questions:

1. Complete these sentences as you listen:

a. Her ............................... position towards me, as an African, was a .............................. well meaning pity.
b. This story about Africa ................................. comes, I think, from western literature.
c. My chracters drove cars, they were not .................................., therefore, they were not authentically African.
d. There were endless stories of Mexicans as people who were ........................ the health care system, ..................... across the border, being arrested at the border, that sort of thing.
e. I had ................................. the single story of Mexicans.
f. What if my roommate knew about Nollywood? Full of innovative people making films despite great technical ..........................
g. People who .................... despite the government, rather than because of it.

2. Can you find an example of a cleft sentence in this talk?

3. What impression do John Locke and Rudyard Kipling contribute to create of the Africans?

4. In what way does she confess the media influenced her view of Mexicans? How is a single story of a people created by the media?

5. What is the relation between storytelling and power?

6. What examples does she provide to exemplify how different peoples have been dispossed by the white people?

7. In what way does the speaker say reclaiming stories is important?