The Danger Of A Single Story By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

In her TED talk called “The danger of a single story” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, speaks about the negative effects, single stories can have on a certain people. A single story is created when the same discourse is being repeated over an over again in books, TV shows or in the news. The single story creates a stereotypical, one sided perception of a group of people. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie tells a story about how she, came to believe a single story in her childhood. When she was a child she read many American and English books, about people, with whom she had very little in common. When she started to write stories herself, the characters were all white, with blue eyes, and were talking about things she never had identified with. But because she had only read books with characters looking like this, she thought that was how characters in books. The American and English books told a single story about the western people, just as many western medias tell a single story about Africa.

She claims that many people in the western society know the single story about Africa. The story about poverty, never ending wars and tribe culture. She further believes that these single stories are created by power. She says, “Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person”. The single stories are created because western countries have the power to create a definitive stories about others.

The woman behind she speech is