Reflection on “The Danger of a Single Story” By Chimamanda Adichie Why this all fuss about a “single story”? So what is a single story? Does this mean manipulation of ‘a single story’ by countless re-telling and thus creating an ‘entrenched’ view in our minds which we fail to challenge and investigate with a forward-looking vision? No wonder, this leads to a lot of assumptions, half-truths and stereotypes when this story is passed on from one to another.
For example a lot of people think that Australia is like the land of the kangaroos and there’s crocodile Dundee catching crocodiles in the Australian outback, but they do not acknowledge the cities, towns, suburbs, and the people who talk good English. These stories told by people represent who they are and where they’re from. It can be seen from many perspectives. So when I watched this video on ted talks I was amazed like the other students were. Chimamanda Adichie is from Nigeria, Africa.
She says that if you hear a single story about a person or a country we risk a critical understanding. She argues that if we focus on the bad things we flatten our experience and overlook many other good things. And she also argues that the single story deprives people’s dignity and every time she mentions the single story which is one of her key concepts she is referring to a stereotype an epic notion or any perception that we project on to someone or to a group of people or country as a whole.
And one thing I found interesting about her talk was that when she was young she was an early reader and an early writer, and when she wrote, her characters exhibited qualities of the things that she learnt as a child that is western literature and that her characters were white people with blue eyes and blonde hair and they were the stereotypical and personifications of the literatures that she read when she was a child. And she was confined to that single story of that characterization.
Then as she started reading other forms of literature which was most specifically African literature which was hard to find when comparing to English literature. So this made her write more short stories with African protagonists and she began to discover new depths and new characterization that she was able to come up with while writing. And that’s what defines that single story. The other thing that she points out is that as Americans suffer from a single story of Africa and that single story is pity.
A real life situation to this is for example when I turn on the TV, I’d probably see two commercials about poverty in India, or about extreme hunger in Africa, or about civil war in Africa. But the truth is that all that is not happening in Africa, it’s just happening in a very small area, not even half the countries in Africa don’t face this. She also tells us that she grew up from an upper middle class family and that she, her friends and her family was well off and the fact is most of the people in Africa is well off.
A really good example in my life how media plays a role in framing single stories is during my cultural exchange program from India to the Netherlands. But I have to tell you, it was a fun trip, even words cannot explain the experience. So one day my Dutch friends wanted to know about India, so they went on Google and typed in India on the search bar. And guess what came on screen? There were pictures of poverty, hunger and cows on the road, donkeys and many pictures of the Bengal tiger and elephants. So this raises a lot of questions like: * Do you go to school on elephants? Do you have televisions in India? * Do you live in huts? So there is the media who constantly give this image of pity. This can be blamed on western influence and western media, but none of the less we are suffering from the single story of Africa and Americans need to break free from it because it offends people and it’s not the right thing to do, and I found that interesting. Also in the book “Heart of darkness” by Joseph Conrad is an amazing piece of literature that brings a change in the readers view, shows us the struggle of the protagonist and it is one of the ways to escape from reality.
The book focuses about racism, colonialism and civilization versus cruelty. This helps in teaching many cultures and different perspectives of people. This is a really good example showing that how literature can change the opinion and views of people. The false perception of her American roommate about Africa and African people was that they do not know how to use a stove, and listened to tribal music. For her the single story of Africa was uncivilized and strange. She also mentioned about stereotypes and she acknowledged that sometimes stereotypes are true ut however they are not balanced and are incomplete she said. That really reminded me about an incident in my Christianity class we had this debate about Colorism. Well Colorism is how people acted towards a group of racial class based on their lightness or darkness of their skin tone. The theory also specified that the lighter complexion would be granted more wealth, higher status and power in the society than the non- white race. Then later the skin tone of god became the main topic. Some people said that the skin color of god was black and some said that the skin color of god was white.
So in every class I had I used to share my reasoning with my other friends about whether god was whether black or white. So one day a friend of mine was like, god is obviously black cause he created Adam and Eve and they lived in Africa so god had to be black and my other white friend was like god had to be white because in the bible its written that I am what I am, but if god was black then he would’ve said I’m is what I’m is. So she was suffering from a single story and influence that all Africans don’t speak proper English.
So that was her single story of African Americans. But I myself suffered from a single story as I thought that Indians only live in India and that there were only Indian people in India. But that wasn’t true as India is a multicultural country where the language, dance, music, religion, and the interesting Indian caste system. One day I read an article in the Hindu, by the well-known Indian actor Aamir khan, it was about the Dalits in India who are marginalized by the Upper caste. It was about the people of the lower caste (Dalits) doing manual scavenging for their survival.
Aamir Khan says that “One of the most heartbreaking encounters for me was listening to Mr. Bezwada Wilson speak about manual scavenging. Words fail me. I am ashamed to admit that it was as late as last year, at the age of 46, that I came to recognize and actually see the existence of manual scavenging. At this late age, for the first time I felt the horror and inhumanity of it. How could I have for 46 years accepted, without batting an eyelid, the fact that some of our countrymen are made to clean the excreta of others with their hands as a means of survival?
That they have no means of escape from it because of the caste that they are born into? Why didn’t I notice or react to this earlier? ” After reading this article I was shaken as I never knew that this was happening to the lower caste. This single story of the Dalits created a sense of pity and made me think from different perspective. As there is no one to fight for their freedom for their caste, the upper castes have taken advantage of the situation.
And some ethnic groups like the African Americans groups are beginning to accept these ethnic notions and getting to accept these single stories as truth and as facts. And it’s not ok as they are depriving their lives of significance and their worth and they’re not making they’re best use of their time in my opinion because they are confined by their single story and where the society has placed them. So I’m not only writing this reflection to encourage people to watch this video of Chimamanda Adichie’s video about the single story but I’m also here to encourage people to try to break from these single stories.
And as she concludes by saying” as we reject a single story, we regain a kind of paradise “And as they say that heaven is paradise and that I am yet to find that whether god is black or white I think he’d use proper English nevertheless. And this is another single story that Christians believe in. So I’d like to conclude by saying that I’m a single story to the people around me and that they shouldn’t judge anyone by their looks or where they’re from, but by character alone. And I think that believing in a single story is not rational and the truth of that story should be found out from experience or a reliable sources and evidences.
So read as much as you can and I think that literature books are like a boundless passport to many countries that gives us the opportunity to travel to many places for free which gives us a chance to think in many perspectives. So never stop reading and keep travelling. ——————————————– [ 1 ]. http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Heart_of_Darkness [ 2 ]. http://kykernel. com/2013/02/06/the-division-created-by-colorism-must-stop/ [ 3 ]. http://www. thehindu. com/opinion/columns/article3616695. ece
