Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Stellar TedTalk -“The Danger of a Single Story”

A few days ago, I happened upon watching a TedTalk that has been on my mind since. Putting it mildly, it was compelling enough for me to write a thorough blog post at the dead of night (it’s 3:10 am at the moment, whoops! ). The Talk is by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a well-known African native writer whose works range from novels to short stories to nonfiction. Here, she reveals some neglected yet eye-opening facts. You can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg

Adichie begins by telling about how Africa has always been perceived as a poor, dejected, illiterate continent where all people do is starve and die of hunger. The idea of Africa being as a place where people live in such unfortunate conditions has rooted so deeply in the brains of the people living outside that it is now difficult to perceive Africa as something otherwise; a continent where happiness does exist, where some people do live a better life, sometimes even better than the middle-class Americans. But the people living outside of Africa have always been told or taught to pity it for the reason that it is inhabited by black individuals, perceived as downtrodden almost solely for the fact that they are more exposed to the sun.

Adichie apprises her personal experience with being a victim to the single story that has been portrayed before the world about Africa and its inhabitants. She tells that contrary to her reality, she has had always been thought of as someone illiterate, poor, and with a lack of intellect by her acquaintances in America only because she belonged to the part of the world whose truth has had forever been concealed by the single, incomplete narratives that were persuasive enough to make its complete reality get negated.

People who have never physically been to Africa and have only seen or heard of it in movies, documentaries, or literature have developed the picture of it in their minds that isn’t completely true. This, Adichie calls the danger of the single story. When one side of the matter is shown, especially a negative one, the audience starts believing in it without feeling the need to look out for the other sides of it as well to get a true and clearer view, and that one side being shown gets installed in their minds for aye.

Adichie acknowledges that stories are essential, but they do make the audience deal from the viewpoint of an experience, a circumstance, or even a conflict from the perspective of the storyteller. This makes them inadvertently function from the point of view of a single narrative. The problem with the single perspective is that it leads one to imperfect, nonsensical, defaulting judgments, conclusions, and decisions. Operating within the framework of a single narrative precludes people from understanding some more complicated and nuanced problems related to it.

What Adichie hopes for people to understand is that they must look out for diverse perspectives, for only they can help them to crumble and unlearn stereotypes and clichés and recognize that there is always more than one narrative on everything that gets talked about. No single story should be given enough power to make ideas persist. There should always be some room for other narratives to appear and reveal the true, complete picture to the world.

The TedTalk has 8 over million views, is 19 minutes long, and every second, every word that Adichie speaks counts. It is one of the most beautifully crafted speeches ever and definitely an eye-opener for many out there, including me.

People and communities are diverse within themselves and they don’t deserve to be invalidated for their single stories that we hear or read about, therefore everyone should be treated fairly and beyond what the world portrays their story as. Nothing should merely be thought of how it gets to be shown to the world like and everyone should do their complete research before developing a sense of hatred, prejudice, or pity for a subject no matter how profoundly convincing the single story may seem.