Chaimae ERKAM October 12, 2019

Report of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speech

What is a single story ?

Stories are powerful, when reality has hidden chronicles, but sometimes they
are too simple to explain situations and make it clear without any mystery. Also
when the story becomes one, it's unique, and sometimes becomes an only
story, and that what we called the danger of the single story. That’s what
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie tried to clarify in her single story in TED talk at
2009.

She grew up on a university campus in eastern Nigeria, her father was a

professor and her mother was an administrator. She started reading American
and British books in the age of two, and writing at the age of seven. And she
figured out that those foreigner books make humans feel how they are
impressionable and vulnerable especially as children, but things changed when
she started reading African books.

She left Nigeria to go to university in the United States at the age of 19, her
roommate was shocked when she discovered that she had a very good English.
Also her roommate has a single story about Africa (a single story of
catastrophe), which in her story there is no possibility of Africans being similar
to her in any way, only pity, and no possibility of a connection as human equals.
So her roommate has throughout her life seen and heard different versions of
this single story.

In addition to that, Chimamanda talked about the single story of power, it’s the
ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive
story of that person. She focused on negative stories that she lived, and it
explains the creation of stereotypes, not because they are negative but
incomplete according to her experience.

In fact, I felt Chimamanda story, I felt the real homesick, and how stereotypes
are harmful because they’re incomplete. So the single story has a powerful
meaning and effect when it's real and complete, besides that the single story
can be dangerous when it's untrue and everyone can believe it, that's what
power can make, making people blind.