The “Danger of a Single Story”, a 2009 TED Talk by Chimamanda Adichie, a young Nigerian author, provides a powerful tool for the Facing History classroom. In the twenty minute video, Adichie describes the powerful impression the multitude of British stories made on her as a young girl growing up in Nigeria. She argues that inherent in the power of stories, is a danger—the danger of only knowing one story about a group. “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”
Africa-not-a-single-story-posterAdichie recounts speaking to an American student who, after reading her novel centered on an abusive male protagonist, lamented the fact that Nigerian men were abusive. Having just read American Psycho, Adichie returns his pity, and calls it a shame that “all young American men are serial killers.” The TED audience laughs at the absurdity of this generalization and her point is clear: on a micro-level, the danger of a single story is that it prevents people from authentically connecting with people as individuals. On a macro-level, the issue is really about power: almost by definition, there are many stories about the dominant culture so the single-story threatens to create stereotypes that stick to groups that are already disempowered.
After seeing this twenty minute video, I knew I wanted to share it with students. I’ve observed that Africa is often students’ default example of human tragedy—“starving children”, “war-torn societies” and other scenes of deprivation and scarcity are conflated with “Africa.” Adichie is articulate, insightful, empowered and engaging—I knew that just seeing her speak would shatter some stereotypes that students hold which oversimplify
