Single Stories Research Paper

The following is how Merriam-Webster dictionary defines stereotype: to believe unfairly that all people or things with a particular characteristic are the same. This is essentially what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie described as the “single story” concept. She described how Americans she encountered had a “single story” about Africans; they are poverty-stricken illiterates who cannot speak English well. This is a stereotype. They unfairly believed that because she is African, she is the same as all other Africans; meaning that she is poor, cannot read, and cannot speak good English. They created this stereotype based on the “single story” they had about Africans, which likely came from books or television. “Single stories” are what lead us to create stereotypes. I believe that “single stories” are formed in one of two ways; we either have not directly experienced something or someone, so we rely on what others say or feel about that someone or something and make a judgment based purely on the information presented to us about it, or, we make judgments about something, someone, or a group of people based solely on a singular experience we had with one or more of those things. …show more content…
Schema is used to relate things we are familiar with to things we are not. We make interpretations based on things we already know, so if we are unable to connect the present with the past, how are we able to make an interpretation? We are not, so things would have no meaning without the ability to connect new experiences with past ones, and therefore we would be very lost. This is why our brains use