Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The Danger of A Single Story (Part 1)

The Danger of a Single Story, by: Chimamanda Adichie

This short piece is very great in my opinion and was shown to me in an ETHN course taught by Fay Akindes. I choose this piece as I think this video discusses much information about how we construct language. Chimamanda is a very skilled writer and gained interest in writing when she was a little girl growing up in Nigeria . She talked about her stories portrayed the British stories in which she read and how her ideas were formed because these were the only books available to her at the time. She goes on to discuss her interest in writing about the things that she read in these books. Later in life she was introduced to books African books, which gave her a better perspective of life of the people of her African descent and she went through a mental shift, which compelled her to write about things she recognized. The discovery of African books and literature saved Adiche from having a single story of what books are. I think that this information displays stratification, displaying different groups that make up a society, she does this throughout her entire speech.

Some really powerful things that said said were, "Children, as well as people, are impressionable and vulnerable in the face of a story." She talks much about many stories about her life where others, as well as herself, have been told about only one side of a story which gives people this default position of sympathy towards other cultures and ethnicity's. This making it impossible for us to see anything other than the single story in which we are fed. Throughout her entire speech she continues to capture my attention with her experiences and life lessons. really enjoyed this video as it taught me the, just by listening to her personal experiences, that one story holds so much power. It really makes me consider the ideas of a danger of a single story and the power that this prevails on people. This means to me that she was using these stories to display how people make judgements about people, another form of using sociolinguistics.

I was really compelled by her many stories but one that stood out to me was the story about her college professor. Adichie talked about how a professor stated that her novel was not authentically-African. She mentioned that she could contend with the idea that her novel had failed in a number of places but she didn't agree with the idea that her novel was not authentically-African, in fact she didn't even know what this meant. I thought it was extremely compelling how people thought, how Adiche thought and how I thought, about many things. Things not only including stereotypes, race and gender differences or disparities but many other ideals that we are fed. I think she made many great points in this video, some more important than others. One very important idea is that it is impossible for us, as people, to engage only in one place, one person or one story, that in order to understand things and their differences as well as similarities one must seek many places, many people and many stories. Stories matter and they are used to disposses, empower and can break or repair all in the form in which they are written and delivered to people reading the stories. After listening to a lot of her stories I have discovered why there is such complexity of language and the many levels in which language consists of. In Adichie's stories I think she displays the meaning of Isomorphic, meaning that "there is no one-to-one correspondence between message and meaning at any level." (Chaika, pp 3)

In regards to how Adichie uses language in this video, I feel that she did a great job expressing feeling, emotion and she gained credibility through her many sides of many stories. Her use of language delivered many different meanings and helped me to question my own assumptions and my ability to open my mind to new ideas. She was a very great storyteller and engaged me into being more self-reflective and she was disruptive of what she calls the, "danger of a single story." Throughout all of her video and through her stories she indirectly brings up ideas of Americanization and globalization. She identifies the relationship between her parents as well as her culture having an effect on her perspectives of language and literature. Her speech obviously displays that she has an accent from another place. She displays certain facial expressions when discussing her stories as well as choice of vocabulary in which she uses.

Why do we stereotype people, what makes this socially normal in our society? (does politics play a role in framing peoples ideas and understandings of other cultures and countries...)