Comments about “The Danger of a Single Story”

We, as human beings, are easy to impress; by nature, vulnerable. We are alleged to
believe the point of view of a story without questioning its partiality. The receiving of this type
of information, from a single source, affects the neutrality of our opinion.

According to Chimamanda, being open to all the perspectives of the same event can
extend our imagination to new worlds and save us from having a single story about any subject.

When we have access to only one version of a story, we developt a pre-regarded vision
that is, most of the time, generic and incomplete. For instance, the case of Chimamanda’s
colleague: the notion of Africa as a negative place, extremely poor, full of misfortune, diseases
and nothing more.

The creation of a single story is closely related to power. As said by Chimamanda

Adichie, “power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the
definitive story of that person” and spread it over and over again, until it becomes the only truth
about them. The desire to be greater and better than the other leads powerful people to tell
stories the way they want, how they want, as many times as they want.

One of the biggest problems about single stories is not that they are untruth, but
incomplete. They create stereotypes with a deficiency of facts and no background. The danger
of a single story has adverse consequences, for example, it takes away people’s dignity by
enhancing how different we are and erasing what unites us.

Here, in Brazil, as an example, we have The Single Story of the Indigenous People.
Many Brazilians think of an Indian as a person who lives naked in the forest, carrying a bow
and arrow. Furthermore, they believe Indians are all the same, the Indigenous culture is
primitive and delayed. Brazilians frequently forget about their Indigenous roots, as well as
African ones, only valuing European progeny.

Opposed to the stereotype, the Indigenous people are varied, their traditions consist of
a rich cultural production and they are constantly evolving without losing identity.

“Stories matter. Many stories matter”.

2021
-CIG Freitas