Example Of A Single Story

A single story is a one sided point of view of something or someone. Single stories have the power to tell false interpretations of the actual story. In a TED talk, Chimamanda’s roommate was surprised on how well she knew English. Her roommate was shocked to learn that Nigeria 's official language was English. She had also assumed that because she had come from Africa, she did not know how to operate a stove. Chimamanda then described how her roommate had felt sorry for her even before she met her. Her roommate has been shown the single story of catastrophe and pity and not the happy sides of Africa. After a couple years she realized why her roommate thought that, because of the photos taken of war and other savage things. Even though this is just one example of a single story, this happens every day; for example Islamic people are shown to be terrorists and …show more content…
In Ibn al-Athir’s, The Capture of Jeruselum, he describes “when the Franks saw how violently the Muslims were attacking, how continuous and effective was the fire from the ballista’s and how busily the sappers were breaching the walls, meeting no resistance, they grew desperate.” Even though the Christians were desperate to find a plan they were rejected many times by the king. The Christians and the Muslim people had a rough time getting along because they had only heard the bad of what they were doing. They started to base their opinions of each other off of these stories which grew into even more hatred between the two. This is a great example of a single sided story because without the full truth neither side knew every detail of what was happening. If both sides had heard about each other’s opinion and the full story, less violence would have occurred and maybe even more