“Stories matter, many stories matter” (17:42), but it is how we use these stories to connect with someone and are not ignorant to the single story. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of her every day like to find her cultural voice. She warns that if only a single story is heard there will be a crucial misunderstanding about a person or thing. She also includes the use of stereotypes in her stories. But she began her talk about her life as a child and the literature she read. Adichie read mainly American and European literature which features white people and Butterbeer. "I did not know that people like me could exist in literature”(2:50) because she read only American and Europeans literature and her skin color and hair did not fit
…show more content…
Adichie continues to talk about her childhood because she believes that, that is where children learn mainly about how to react to different streotypes. She says that the poor man who helped her family was introduced to her as poor, “their poverty was my single story of them”(4:11) because her mother kept telling her they were poor, she could not believe that they had enough skill to make a basket. She then turned her story towards when she was older in America and had a white college roommate whom was close minded and was used to the westernized culture of stereotypes. “My roommate has a single story about Africans” (5:06). Adichie's roommate though that Africans has tribal music and didn’t know how to use stoves or speak English at all. There was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way. There was no connection of equality between her roommate and herself. Adichie had the identity as being African, although she had no idea about other parts of Africa but the one she grew up as because people assumed her as a single …show more content…
When understanding that the narrow view of a certain thing or person is broken is when the single story has ended. There is the power that comes with it, as I agree with what Adichie says "show people as one thing, as only one thing over and over again and that is how you create a single story" (9:40). Power is the root of how people are given the same object over and over again by a single person or circumstance. And having the power to change the story is how to realize the truth. It is apparent that stereotypes are used to create a single story, but it is also a self-awareness and technological advancement. To realize a certain stereotype is false, one can research or see in person that these are not true and then it would not continue into a single story because they would not be based on false stereotypes. As Adichie says, “all of these stories make me who I am, but to insist on only these negative stories is to flatten my experience and to overlook the many stories that form me. The single story creates stereotypes. And the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue but that they incomplete. They make one story become the only story” (13:23). This emphasizes on how people are different rather than similar and everyone has a story it just depends on what they want to include or leave out when they retell it. I cannot
Adichie continues to talk about her childhood because she believes that, that is where children learn mainly about how to react to different streotypes. She says that the poor man who helped her family was introduced to her as poor, “their poverty was my single story of them”(4:11) because her mother kept telling her they were poor, she could not believe that they had enough skill to make a basket. She then turned her story towards when she was older in America and had a white college roommate whom was close minded and was used to the westernized culture of stereotypes. “My roommate has a single story about Africans” (5:06). Adichie's roommate though that Africans has tribal music and didn’t know how to use stoves or speak English at all. There was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way. There was no connection of equality between her roommate and herself. Adichie had the identity as being African, although she had no idea about other parts of Africa but the one she grew up as because people assumed her as a single …show more content…
When understanding that the narrow view of a certain thing or person is broken is when the single story has ended. There is the power that comes with it, as I agree with what Adichie says "show people as one thing, as only one thing over and over again and that is how you create a single story" (9:40). Power is the root of how people are given the same object over and over again by a single person or circumstance. And having the power to change the story is how to realize the truth. It is apparent that stereotypes are used to create a single story, but it is also a self-awareness and technological advancement. To realize a certain stereotype is false, one can research or see in person that these are not true and then it would not continue into a single story because they would not be based on false stereotypes. As Adichie says, “all of these stories make me who I am, but to insist on only these negative stories is to flatten my experience and to overlook the many stories that form me. The single story creates stereotypes. And the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue but that they incomplete. They make one story become the only story” (13:23). This emphasizes on how people are different rather than similar and everyone has a story it just depends on what they want to include or leave out when they retell it. I cannot