The Danger of a Single Story

How to Pronounce Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie?

obligated -require or compel

Impressionable- easily influenced or affected by something.

 Vulnerable: weak and easily hurt physically or emotionally, exposed to harm and danger. 

 Convinced: completely sure of something 

 Kinky: (here) curly 

Ponytails: a hair style in which hair hangs down like a horse’s tail

 Stirred: (here) moved

Conventional: traditional and ordinary

 Norm: an accepted standard, a custom 

Live-in: working and staying in the same home 

 Yam: A yam is a root vegetable which is like a potato, and grows in tropical regions. 

 I'm a storyteller. And I would like to tell you a few personal stories about what I like to call ‘the danger of a single story.’ I grew up on a university campus in Eastern Nigeria. My mother says that I started reading at the age of two, although I think it probably happened when I was four. So I was an early reader, and what I read were British and American children's books.

 I was also an early writer, and when I began to write, at about the age of seven, stories in pencil with crayon illustrations that my poor mother was obligated to read, I wrote exactly the kinds of stories I was reading. All my characters were white and blue-eyed, they played in the snow, they ate apples, and they talked a lot about the weather, how lovely it was that the sun had come out. But I had never been outside Nigeria. We didn't have snow, we ate mangoes, and we never talked about the weather, because there was no need to

1. What kinds of books did Adichie read when she started reading?

2. What kinds of stories did she write and how were her characters?

3. What was her mother obligated to read?

4. How were her characters different from the children of Nigeria?

 What this shows, I think, is how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story, particularly as children. Because all I had read were books in which characters were foreign, I had become convinced that books by their very nature had to have foreigners in them and had to be about things with which I could not personally identify. Now, things changed when I discovered African books. There weren't many of them available, and they weren't quite as easy to find as the foreign books. But when I read Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye, I realised that people like me, girls with skin the color of chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form ponytails, could also exist in literature. I started to write about things I recognised. I loved the American and British books I read. They stirred my imagination and opened up new worlds for me. But African writers saved me from having a single story of what books are.

5. What were Adichie’s ideas about books before she discovered African books?

6. How could she realize that people like her, girls with chocolate-coloured skin and kinky hair,

could also exist in literature?

7. How did American and British books help her in her writing?

8. How did the African writers save Adichie?

 I come from a conventional, middle-class Nigerian family. My father was a professor. My mother was an administrator. And so we had, as was the norm, live-in domestic help, who would often come from nearby rural villages. So, the year I turned eight, we got a new house boy. His name was Fide. The only thing my mother told us about him was that his family was very poor. My mother sent yams and rice and our old clothes to his family. And when I didn't finish my dinner, my mother would say, ‘Finish your food! Don't you know? People like Fide's family have nothing.’ So I felt enormous pity for Fide's family. 

9. Describe Adichie’s family.

10. Who was Fide?

11 What would her mother do to help Fide’s family?

12.What actually made Adichie form a single story about Fide’s family and what was that story?

13. What did Fide’s mother show Adichie when she visited their family and why did it startle her?

Assignment

Adichie’s visit to Fide’s family was a great learning experience for her.

 After reaching back home, she jots down her feelings in the diary. Write the likely diary entry.

Startled: surprised, shocked

Raffia: the fibre from the leaves of the raffia tree (a type of African palm tree)

 Then one Saturday, we went to his village to visit and his mother showed us a beautifully patterned basket of dyed raffia that his brother had made. I was startled. It had not occurred to me that anybody in his family could actually make something. All I had heard about them was how poor they were, so that it had become impossible for me to see them as anything else but poor. Their poverty was my single story of them. 

 Occur: (here) come into mind Consequently: as a result

 Default: (here) standard or normal

 Patronizing: apparently showing kindness by actually covering a feeling of superiority. 

 Embrace: (here) receive 

Irritable: easily annoyed, ill-tempered, sensitive 

Incomprehensible: not easily understood 

Authentically: really,

 Devalue:, underestimate.

 Insist on: (here) stick on. 

Flatten: (here) knock down or defeat

 Stereotype: a fixed idea about a person or thing but that is not often correct.

 Years later, I thought about this when I left Nigeria to go to university in the United States. I was 19. My American roommate was shocked by me. She asked where I had learned to speak English so well, and was confused when I said that Nigeria happened to have English as its official language. She asked if she could listen to what she called my ‘tribal music’ and was consequently very disappointed when I produced my tape of Mariah Carey 

She had felt sorry for me even before she saw me. Her default position towards me, as an African, was a kind of patronising well-meaning pity. My roommate had a single story of Africa. In this single story, there was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way, no possibility of feelings more complex than pity, no possibility of a connection as human equals. 

 I must say that before I went to the U.S., I didn't consciously identify as African. But in the U.S., whenever Africa came up, people turned to me. I did come to embrace this new identity, and in many ways I think of myself now as African, although I still get quite irritable when Africa is referred to as a country. After I had spent some years in the U.S. as an African, I began to understand my roommate's response to me. If I had not grown up in Nigeria, and if all I knew about Africa were from popular images, I too would think that Africa was a place of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals, and incomprehensible people unable to speak for themselves and waiting to be saved by a kind, white foreigner. I would see Africans in the same way that I, as a child, had seen Fide's family.

 I began to realize that my American roommate must have throughout her life seen and heard different versions of this single story. A professor once told me that my novel was not 'authentically African.' I did not know what African authenticity was. The professor told me that my characters were too much like him, an educated and middle-class man. My characters drove cars. They were not starving. Therefore they were not authentically African.

  When I learned, some years ago, that writers were expected to have had really unhappy childhoods to be successful, I began to think about how I could invent horrible things my parents had done to me. But the truth is that I had a very happy childhood, full of laughter and love, in a very close-knit family. But I also had grandfathers who died in refugee camps. My cousin Polle died because he could not get adequate healthcare. One of my closest friends, Okoloma, died in a plane crash because our fire trucks did not have water. essiv e military governments that I grew up under repressive devalued education, so that sometimes, my parents were not paid their salaries. All of these stories make me who I am. But to insist on only these negative stories is to flatten my experience and to overlook the many other stories that formed me. stereotypes 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.

Assignment.

Critically analyse the speech of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and prepare a write up

In her speech “The danger of a single story”, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie claims that single stories are often develop from misunderstandings,. She explains that how there could be a danger of only knowing one sided story about a group. The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is that they are false as well as misleading. They make one story become the only story to be heard and taught to other people. Through few examples, she illustrates her own experience of being a victim of false stories.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was an early writer when she began writing at about the age of seven. She used to write exactly the kinds of stories she read, where all the characters were white and blue-eyed playing in the snow, eating apples and talking a lot about the weather like how lovely the sun’s appearance had been etc.After reading Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye, she realised that people like her, girls with skin the colour of chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form ponytails, could also exist in literature.

The year she turned eight, her family got a new house boy, Fide. The only thing her mother told her about him was that his family was very poor. Then one Saturday, she saw a beautifully patterned basket of dyed raffia that Fide’s brother had made. It had become impossible for her to see them as anything else but poor because poverty was her single story of them. This was her first single story which made her realise that how misleading such things could be.

Years later, she left Nigeria to go to university in the United States at the age of nineteen. Her American roommate was startled by her knowledge of English and her lifestyle.She began to realize that her American roommate throughout her life must have seen and heard different versions of this single story. A professor once told that her novel was not authentically African as the characters of her work were too much like him, an educated and middle-class man, driving cars, not starving. Therefore, they were not authentically African according to him.

When she learned that writers were expected to have had really unhappy childhoods to be successful, but in the other side she had a very happy childhood, full of laughter and love, in a very close-knit family, she realised that to insist on only these negative stories was to flatten her experience and to overlook the many other stories that formed her.

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.

The danger of a single story