The Danger of a Single Story

Summary of “The danger of a single story”

The video’s name is “The danger of a singer story”, the story teller Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie use her experiences tell people what is “single story”. In the video, the speaker share some her experience about singer story. Firstly, she talked about her American roommate in the university. Her American roommate shocked by her, she asked the speaker where she learned to speak English so well and she was confused when the speaker said that Nigeria happened to have English as its official language. She was very disappointed when she asked if she could listen the speaker’ “tribal music” and the speaker gave her a tape of Mariah Carey. Moreover, she assumed that the speaker did no how to use a stove, these phenomenon all because her American roommate has a single story of Africa. Secondly, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie tell people another experience which is her professor told her that her novel was not “authentically African”. Her professor said her characters were too much like him, an educated and middle-class man. Characters drove cars in her novel, they were not starving. Therefore the professor believes that these characters were not authentically African. Overall, the message behind this video is that the single story robs people of dignity and it makes equal humanity difficult. People should not has single stories for any place, they are incomplete. I really like the story she talked, and a think we need do something to avoid people has single stories.