Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The danger of a single story | TED

Summary

In her thought-provoking TED talk, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warns against the 'danger of a single story.' Growing up in Nigeria, Adichie was initially influenced by Western literature, leading her to write stories that reflected foreign characters and experiences. Discovering African literature later expanded her worldview and storytelling. The talk provides an insightful reflection on how one's cultural narratives can shape perceptions and reinforce stereotypes. Adichie shares numerous anecdotes demonstrating how single stories of Africa have perpetuated misguided stereotypes in Western cultures, and vice versa. Her speech is a call to embrace diverse narratives to appreciate the richness and complexity of different cultures.

Highlights

• Adichie humorously recounts how she wrote about white, blue-eyed characters living in snowy lands, despite never experiencing snow. ❄️
• Her American roommate's stereotypical assumptions highlight the pitfalls of the 'single story' narrative about Africa. 🇳🇬
• The story about Fide and his family's beautiful basket demonstrates how single narratives overshadow people's multifaceted realities. 🧺

Key Takeaways

• Literature's influence is profound, shaping the worldview of young minds by depicting only foreign, often Western stories but discovering local narratives offers a broader perspective. 📚
• A single story, as Adichie explains, creates stereotypes which are not inherently untrue but dangerously incomplete, making one story the only story. 🌍
• Embracing multiple stories is crucial as it restores dignity, breaks stereotypes, and fosters a deeper understanding between cultures. 🤝

Overview

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie opens her TED talk with charming anecdotes of her childhood in Nigeria, where her early writing was influenced by British and American literature. She humorously recounts creating characters living in wintry climates, despite Nigeria's warm weather, painting a vivid picture of how formative stories can shape perception from a young age.

Adichie goes on to illustrate the concept of 'the danger of a single story' with examples from her own life, including her first experiences in America, where her roommate assumed she knew little about modernity due to prevailing single stories about Africa. These experiences underscore the importance of exposing oneself to diverse narratives to gain a true understanding of other cultures.

The talk concludes on an encouraging note, emphasizing that by rejecting the single story, we allow for richer, more complex narratives to emerge, bridging gaps and fostering connections between different cultures. Adichie’s insightful speech leaves a lasting impact, urging both individuals and societies to embrace a multitude of stories.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction: The danger of the single story The chapter introduces the concept of 'the danger of the single story.' The author, a storyteller, begins with personal anecdotes, mentioning their upbringing on a university campus in eastern Nigeria and their early start in reading. This sets the stage for exploring how single narratives can shape perceptions and lead to misunderstandings.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Early Reading Influences The chapter titled 'Early Reading Influences' narrates the author's early experiences with reading and writing during childhood. The author was an early reader, immersing themselves in British and American children's books. This reading influenced the author's early writing endeavors, which began around the age of seven. The stories crafted during this period, illustrated with crayon by the author and read by their mother, mirrored the literature they consumed. Consequently, all the characters in these tales were white with blue eyes, reflecting the prevalent themes and characters in the books the author read.
• 02:00 - 03:00: Realization through African Literature The chapter titled 'Realization through African Literature' explores the impact of British literature on the perception and portrayal of characters by a Nigerian who has never experienced the cultural elements depicted in those books. Despite growing up in Nigeria, the narrator initially creates characters who engage in activities typical of British settings, like playing in the snow and drinking ginger beer, which reflects the profound influence that reading foreign literature has had on their storytelling. This realization marks a pivotal point where the narrator recognizes the disparity between the fictional experiences shaped by British narratives and the authentic experiences of life in Nigeria. The chapter underscores the importance of representation and authentic storytelling grounded in one's own cultural context.
• 04:00 - 05:00: Encounter with Stereotypes in America The chapter titled 'Encounter with Stereotypes in America' delves into the influence of stories, especially on children. The author shares an anecdote about their curiosity for ginger beer, a drink they had never encountered but desired to taste after reading about it. This reflects how stories can shape perceptions, particularly when all the characters and scenarios in the books are foreign, influencing the belief that books are supposed to contain foreign elements.
• 05:00 - 07:30: Understanding Single Stories through Personal Experience This chapter explores the impact of discovering African literature on an individual's perception of stories. The author highlights the difficulty of identifying with foreign books without personal connections. A shift occurs upon discovering African authors like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye, changing the author's understanding of literature and reflecting the importance of representation in stories.
• 10:00 - 15:00: The Role of Power in Single Stories The chapter discusses the influence of power in single stories, with a personal anecdote from the author about her journey in literature. The author loved American and British literature, which sparked her imagination and introduced new worlds. However, these works also inadvertently limited her perception of representation in literature, as she didn't see people like herself in those stories. The discovery of African writers broadened her perspective, rescuing her from a 'single story' narrative and highlighting the importance of representation in literature. She also mentions her background from a conventional middle-class Nigerian family.
• 15:00 - 19:00: Overcoming the Single Story The chapter titled 'Overcoming the Single Story' narrates a personal account where the author talks about their family's experience with a live-in domestic help named Fide, who came from a nearby rural village. The author's family was relatively affluent, with the father being a professor and the mother an administrator. The only information they had about Fide was that he came from a very poor family, which was highlighted by the fact that the mother would send yams, rice, and old clothes to his family. This serves as an introduction to the central theme of the chapter - challenging and overcoming simplistic and generalized narratives about individuals or communities, often referred to as a 'single story.'

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The danger of a single story | TED Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 I'm a storyteller. And I would like to tell you a few personal stories about what I like to call "the danger of the 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 four is probably close to the truth.
• 00:30 - 01:00 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,
• 01:00 - 01:30 they played in the snow, they ate apples, (Laughter) and they talked a lot about the weather, how lovely it was that the sun had come out. (Laughter) Now, this despite the fact that I lived in Nigeria. 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. My characters also drank a lot of ginger beer, because the characters in the British books I read
• 01:30 - 02:00 drank ginger beer. Never mind that I had no idea what ginger beer was. (Laughter) And for many years afterwards, I would have a desperate desire to taste ginger beer. But that is another story. What this demonstrates, 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
• 02:00 - 02:30 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 because of writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye, I went through a mental shift in my perception of literature. I realized that people like me, girls with skin the color of chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form ponytails,
• 02:30 - 03:00 could also exist in literature. I started to write about things I recognized. Now, I loved those American and British books I read. They stirred my imagination. They opened up new worlds for me. But the unintended consequence was that I did not know that people like me could exist in literature. So what the discovery of African writers did for me was this: It saved me from having a single story of what books are. I come from a conventional, middle-class Nigerian family.
• 03:00 - 03:30 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.
• 03:30 - 04:00 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. Then one Saturday, we went to his village to visit, and his mother showed us a beautifully patterned basket made 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.
• 04:00 - 04:30 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. 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.
• 04:30 - 05:00 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. (Laughter) She assumed that I did not know how to use a stove. What struck me was this: She had felt sorry for me even before she saw me. Her default position toward me, as an African, was a kind of patronizing, well-meaning pity.
• 05:00 - 05:30 My roommate had a single story of Africa: a single story of catastrophe. 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. Never mind that I knew nothing about places like Namibia.
• 05:30 - 06:00 But 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, the most recent example being my otherwise wonderful flight from Lagos two days ago, in which there was an announcement on the Virgin flight about the charity work in "India, Africa and other countries." (Laughter) So, after I had spent some years in the U.S. as an African,
• 06:00 - 06:30 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, fighting senseless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS, 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,
• 06:30 - 07:00 as a child, had seen Fide's family. This single story of Africa ultimately comes, I think, from Western literature. Now, here is a quote from the writing of a London merchant called John Lok, who sailed to west Africa in 1561 and kept a fascinating account of his voyage. After referring to the black Africans as "beasts who have no houses," he writes, "They are also people without heads,
• 07:00 - 07:30 having their mouth and eyes in their breasts." Now, I've laughed every time I've read this. And one must admire the imagination of John Lok. But what is important about his writing is that it represents the beginning of a tradition of telling African stories in the West: A tradition of Sub-Saharan Africa as a place of negatives, of difference, of darkness, of people who, in the words of the wonderful poet Rudyard Kipling, are "half devil, half child."
• 07:30 - 08:00 And so, I began to realize that my American roommate must have throughout her life seen and heard different versions of this single story, as had a professor, who once told me that my novel was not "authentically African." Now, I was quite willing to contend that there were a number of things wrong with the novel, that it had failed in a number of places, but I had not quite imagined that it had failed at achieving something called African authenticity.
• 08:00 - 08:30 In fact, 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. But I must quickly add that I too am just as guilty in the question of the single story. A few years ago, I visited Mexico from the U.S.
• 08:30 - 09:00 The political climate in the U.S. at the time was tense, and there were debates going on about immigration. And, as often happens in America, immigration became synonymous with Mexicans. There were endless stories of Mexicans as people who were fleecing the healthcare system, sneaking across the border, being arrested at the border, that sort of thing. I remember walking around on my first day in Guadalajara, watching the people going to work,
• 09:00 - 09:30 rolling up tortillas in the marketplace, smoking, laughing. I remember first feeling slight surprise. And then, I was overwhelmed with shame. I realized that I had been so immersed in the media coverage of Mexicans that they had become one thing in my mind, the abject immigrant. I had bought into the single story of Mexicans and I could not have been more ashamed of myself. So that is how to create a single story, show a people as one thing,
• 09:30 - 10:00 as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become. It is impossible to talk about the single story without talking about power. There is a word, an Igbo word, that I think about whenever I think about the power structures of the world, and it is "nkali." It's a noun that loosely translates to "to be greater than another." Like our economic and political worlds, stories too are defined by the principle of nkali:
• 10:00 - 10:30 How they are told, who tells them, when they're told, how many stories are told, are really dependent on power. Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person. The Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti writes that if you want to dispossess a people, the simplest way to do it is to tell their story and to start with, "secondly."
• 10:30 - 11:00 Start the story with the arrows of the Native Americans, and not with the arrival of the British, and you have an entirely different story. Start the story with the failure of the African state, and not with the colonial creation of the African state, and you have an entirely different story. I recently spoke at a university where a student told me that it was such a shame that Nigerian men were physical abusers
• 11:00 - 11:30 like the father character in my novel. I told him that I had just read a novel called "American Psycho" -- (Laughter) -- and that it was such a shame that young Americans were serial murderers. (Laughter) (Applause) Now, obviously I said this in a fit of mild irritation. (Laughter)
• 11:30 - 12:00 But it would never have occurred to me to think that just because I had read a novel in which a character was a serial killer that he was somehow representative of all Americans. This is not because I am a better person than that student, but because of America's cultural and economic power, I had many stories of America. I had read Tyler and Updike and Steinbeck and Gaitskill. I did not have a single story of America. When I learned, some years ago, that writers were expected to have had really unhappy childhoods
• 12:00 - 12:30 to be successful, I began to think about how I could invent horrible things my parents had done to me. (Laughter) 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.
• 12:30 - 13:00 I grew up under repressive military governments that devalued education, so that sometimes, my parents were not paid their salaries. And so, as a child, I saw jam disappear from the breakfast table, then margarine disappeared, then bread became too expensive, then milk became rationed. And most of all, a kind of normalized political fear invaded our lives. All of these stories make me who I am.
• 13:00 - 13:30 But to insist on only these negative stories is to flatten my experience and to overlook the many other stories that formed me. 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. Of course, Africa is a continent full of catastrophes: There are immense ones, such as the horrific rapes in Congo
• 13:30 - 14:00 and depressing ones, such as the fact that 5,000 people apply for one job vacancy in Nigeria. But there are other stories that are not about catastrophe, and it is very important, it is just as important, to talk about them. I've always felt that it is impossible to engage properly with a place or a person without engaging with all of the stories of that place and that person. The consequence of the single story is this: It robs people of dignity.
• 14:00 - 14:30 It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar. So what if before my Mexican trip, I had followed the immigration debate from both sides, the U.S. and the Mexican? What if my mother had told us that Fide's family was poor and hardworking? What if we had an African television network that broadcast diverse African stories all over the world? What the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe calls "a balance of stories."
• 14:30 - 15:00 What if my roommate knew about my Nigerian publisher, Muhtar Bakare, a remarkable man who left his job in a bank to follow his dream and start a publishing house? Now, the conventional wisdom was that Nigerians don't read literature. He disagreed. He felt that people who could read, would read, if you made literature affordable and available to them. Shortly after he published my first novel, I went to a TV station in Lagos to do an interview,
• 15:00 - 15:30 and a woman who worked there as a messenger came up to me and said, "I really liked your novel. I didn't like the ending. Now, you must write a sequel, and this is what will happen ..." (Laughter) And she went on to tell me what to write in the sequel. I was not only charmed, I was very moved. Here was a woman, part of the ordinary masses of Nigerians, who were not supposed to be readers. She had not only read the book, but she had taken ownership of it and felt justified in telling me what to write in the sequel.
• 15:30 - 16:00 Now, what if my roommate knew about my friend Funmi Iyanda, a fearless woman who hosts a TV show in Lagos, and is determined to tell the stories that we prefer to forget? What if my roommate knew about the heart procedure that was performed in the Lagos hospital last week? What if my roommate knew about contemporary Nigerian music, talented people singing in English and Pidgin, and Igbo and Yoruba and Ijo, mixing influences from Jay-Z to Fela
• 16:00 - 16:30 to Bob Marley to their grandfathers. What if my roommate knew about the female lawyer who recently went to court in Nigeria to challenge a ridiculous law that required women to get their husband's consent before renewing their passports? What if my roommate knew about Nollywood, full of innovative people making films despite great technical odds, films so popular that they really are the best example of Nigerians consuming what they produce?
• 16:30 - 17:00 What if my roommate knew about my wonderfully ambitious hair braider, who has just started her own business selling hair extensions? Or about the millions of other Nigerians who start businesses and sometimes fail, but continue to nurse ambition? Every time I am home I am confronted with the usual sources of irritation for most Nigerians: our failed infrastructure, our failed government, but also by the incredible resilience of people who thrive despite the government,
• 17:00 - 17:30 rather than because of it. I teach writing workshops in Lagos every summer, and it is amazing to me how many people apply, how many people are eager to write, to tell stories. My Nigerian publisher and I have just started a non-profit called Farafina Trust, and we have big dreams of building libraries and refurbishing libraries that already exist and providing books for state schools that don't have anything in their libraries, and also of organizing lots and lots of workshops,
• 17:30 - 18:00 in reading and writing, for all the people who are eager to tell our many stories. Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity. The American writer Alice Walker wrote this about her Southern relatives who had moved to the North.
• 18:00 - 18:30 She introduced them to a book about the Southern life that they had left behind. "They sat around, reading the book themselves, listening to me read the book, and a kind of paradise was regained." I would like to end with this 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.
• 18:30 - 19:00 Thank you. (Applause)