Blog #1

The Dangers of a Single Story

It never occured to me before the dangers of a single story until seeing Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s moving TED talk. Her talk shined a light on the issue of the impressions we get as readers from stories. As a reader who is hispanic and who lived in a lower class urban city my whole life, I can relate to what Adichie stated referring to not relating to the character of the books she’s read who were white, and lived a life much different from hers. There are over 7 billion people on the planet, all with different stories, lives, and experiences. Yet we all tend to compare ourselves and our lives with a single story that we read from a completely different person with a completely different life from ours. These stories also influence our minds and point of views about things we at times aren’t even aware of. This causes us to judge and make assumptions about a variety of types of individuals, issues, lifestyles, etc. that we know nothing about. Adichie speaks about how her roommate had made assumptions about her and her life just because of where she came from, not knowing it wasn’t at all what she was expecting. Yet however Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie states how she also found herself stereotyping hispanics and people from other cultures and I myself am guilty of doing the same. We are influenced by the stories we read and if we constantly read the same style of stories that the media and public throw at us, then this will continue. The dangers of a single story is much deeper than one realizes, which is why it is essential that we produce as well as read stories from different kinds of authors from different backgrounds, countries, and cultures. I appreciated Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED talk and introducing me to the realization of this great issues as well as teaching me to not judge others by the misconceptions that I believe to be true by stories.