Reassessing the Single Story In her speech, “The Danger of a Single Story,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie uses her personal life and experiences to highlight the danger of only knowing a single story about a different culture rather than recognizing the culture’s multiple stories. Adichie considers herself a storyteller and has proven to be a successful one with her vast majority of stories. By sharing her story, she warns that if we only hear a single story about another person, we risk a significant misconception. Adichie begins her speech with a recollection of the stories she wrote as a child and how they were always the same as “stories I was reading.” She then explains how the characteristics in her book were nothing like that of Nigeria,…show more content… She explains that the only thing she heard about Mexicans, were that they were “fleecing the healthcare system, sneaking across the border, being arrested at the border, that sort of thing” (Adichie). The image she had of Mexicans contradicted with what she had seen when she visited Mexico; “people were going to work, rolling up tortillas in the marketplace, smoking, and laughing” (Adichie). In shame, Adichie realized that she had only the single story of Mexicans because she was so immersed in the media coverage. As being that of Mexican descendant, the reader has experienced the dangers of a single story. When the reader tells people of her Mexican decent, the most common thought that people had where that of illegal immigration. The single story that many individuals have people of Mexican decent, is that their family came to the United Stated…show more content… It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar.” This statement is used to get the reader to think about how they have unknowingly judged others because of a single story, and how dangerous this can be. Finally, Adichie makes an empowering statement about how stories are relevant and that “stories can break the dignity of a person, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.” Following her enlightening statement, Adichie ends her speech with a thought “that when we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.” Because Adichie tells of her own first hand experiences, and because of the many prizes she has won for the many stories that she has written, this makes her an excellent role model. By sharing her first hand experiences and opinions, Adichie does an exquisite job of making her audience reassess the consequences of focusing on only one story, or the single
