Please watch this TED Talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Please share one or two takeaways from the talk. Also, please share if this talk inspired you to look at your literacy narrative differently in any way. Your response should be four to seven sentences long.
17 thoughts on “Blog Post #3: The Danger of a Single Story”
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One of the takeaways of this TED talk for me is that there is never a single story about anything. Chimamanda said, “So that is how to create a single story, show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.” She told many examples from her life when she or other people thought about something or someone based on only one thing they heard. I think it is very important to understand that you need to know more to be able to judge adequately. You should not think that people are poor because they are lazy. They could be very hardworking and talented, just be unlucky on their journey to success. You need to see different angles of the situation to know the truth. If you will judge from one single story, then it will create stereotypes, and as Chimamanda said, “The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.”
This TED talk inspired me not to be quick to judge. Only because I don’t understand something or just don’t know a lot about something, doesn’t make it bad. And to see more clearly, I need to hear different stories and to look from different angles.
Two takeaways from this TED talk for me are; our surroundings form our mindset of the world, of the things we have no knowledge about, and how storytelling is important. Chimamanda’s parents have always talked about how Fide’s family was poor and nothing else, and only after visiting them, she found out that Fide’s family is also very hardworking. This goes to show the importance of hearing a story from multiple perspectives or seeing it with our own eyes because everyone has their own opinion and viewpoint; you never know if a person is being biased or telling the real story. It’s also important not to be single minded on one story, because you never know the real deal until you see for your self, just like how Mexico was way different then what Chimamanda had seen on TV. It is also important to tell our own stories, to help spread multiple perspectives of a single story. Thus, people should be aware of the danger of a single story and should get their information from multiple sources.
This TED talk made me understand how every story matter. Give people the benefit of the doubt, let them tell you stories, let them talk to you about their feelings or their long term goals or just to talk. You never understand what people are going through until you hear them out and allowing them to tell you stories. People often likes to jump to conclusions based off of people looks or what they wear. But by us hearing their stories, we as audience will come out the other side more educated, instead of asking questions or being surprised for them just simply being themselves.
There are many takeaways in this TED talk, but one that I would like to share is that how there is never a single story about any place or a person. I really admire how the novelist shows her “authentic cultural voice” through storytelling by using some people in her life and different types of places. For instance, her mother told her about how poor their new house boy, Fide, was and ever since then, all she could see him and his family was poverty. This was because all she ever heard about them was how they were poor, which was very one sided or in other words, a single story. I think it is crucial to understand about a person or a place well enough from different perspectives rather than to judge them based on what one thing people only know or heard from. Moreover, just like what the speaker said, unfair judgement due to a single story could create stereotypes as they are false and incomplete because “they make one story become the only story.” We must learn to tell the definitive story of a person or a place and not judge too fast.
This TedTalk served as a reminder to not over generalize the stories we hear. Chimamanda said, “They make one story become the only story.” This was an eye-opening statement because we tend to believe the stories people tell, but we do not acknowledge there can be different views on it. We make stereotypical statements that other people may believe, then it becomes known that is “the only story” that is passed on. So, we should be more open to multiple perspectives of stories and not only believe what the media tells us.
One takeaway from the Ted talk for me is a person’s story isn’t two-dimensional, but complex. In the Tedtalk, the speaker Chimamanda discuss how there is more to a person than how the media may portray them. She talked about her interaction with her old roomate who build an image of her just from the simple fact that she was African. America media protrays Africa as a poor and corrupted area. In addition, they paint this idea that an African’s way of life is completely different from an American. The media only shows one side of the story. In Africa, there was people who don’t know how to use modern devices and live in tribes. However, it doesn’t mean that it applies to everyone. Her ted talk can serve as a reminder that there is more to someone than a sterotype or a label.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie had an experience during her childhood which is when she was young, she read stories which was written and view from a different lifestyle. She read British stories which culture is different from Nigeria. Those stories talked about characters who are white, had a bad childhood, and had a setting which are completely opposite of how she lives. Basically she had one view of what she read, “a single story” as she described it and this basically creates a narrative that is not pure. Stereotypes are formed by a single narrative, if there was many different views than there would be more of an understanding of the story.
One of the takeaways from the talk for me is the single story affects what we think and believe deeply. I love the quote, “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” It can describe the influences of a single story because the incompleteness of a single story tells only one side of the story. Therefore, stereotypes are created by this one side of the story, which affects the readers’ or listeners’ correctness of the interpretation and understanding of the single story.
Another takeaway I got from the talk is that stories are influential because their words matter. According to the talk, this is a quote best explains the idea, “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.” Therefore, stories and their words matter either in people’s conception or in the distribution of power because stories make beliefs and concepts of society.
This talk inspired me to look at my literacy narrative differently since I now understand the story that I wrote by my hands might affect people deeply in different ways. Therefore, I understand that I have to clearly write the full story of the situation, instead of only write a single story because one side of the story is not enough to make us understand everything and the truth of the situation.
People see what they want to see. When people find out that things may not be what they think they are, they are often surprised and may not even be able to accept it. This kind of stereotype often limits people’s imagination. “Africans should be poor. if they were not starving and drove cars, they are not authentically African. ”But no one knows exactly what authentically African is. So, if people really want to know what the world really looks like, they have to accept the fact that what they see might not be what they think, and let the single stories disappear.
I was super excited to watch this video again. I first watched this TED talk in my WGS class at Hunter College. Every time I watch this TED talk I get inspired by her backstory. It is crazy how a “single story” can be told in many different ways. It creates stereotypes that are not true. The person would only get one point of view and would not know the other sides. Just like Adichie’s view on the house boy, Fide. She would think that his family was poor and give him pity until her family visited him. She was never told that his family was anything but poor. Same with Adichie’s roommate, how she only thought of the stereotype of Africans. Her roommate was also told a single story of Africa and assumed how Adichie should be like. It amazes me how a single story can make people assume what things should be like.
One takeaway I learned from this TED talk is people can be fooled by a single story, which means what they believed may not be the truth even though they had been told the “truth” for a long time. Those superficial “facts” will impair one’s ability to think critically and they will less likely to judge and doubt what they deeply trust. As Chimamanda mentioned: “show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.” Take Chimamanda as an example, she was shocked by the stereotype Americans have for Africans; but her experience of being shocked by seeing beautiful baskets made by Fedi’s family was also related to her assertion that they were nothing but poverty. These both are examples that show how misleading a single story can be.
One main point that stuck with me and I kept in mind through the video was when she mentioned the roommate. When the roommate had said that they were all the negative connotations towards someone that comes from another country hit me. When I was growing up and having my struggles in literature I wasn’t thought to be automatically terrible but just because she was from a different country doesn’t mean anything less than someone in America. Everyone is equal. This video kind of fueled my literacy narrative.
The biggest takeaway from this TED talk is how people place their intuition and bias based on other’s ethnicity and race. As an African, she talks about her expericence related to her race where people thought their lifes were suppose to be in poverty and undeveloped living conditions. She uses her action to prove that those people’s baised and stereotypes are wrong and unreasonable. This talk inspires me that everyone is “biased” in some degree because our brain like to categorize and label things automatically. I feel strongly relatable to her experience and i can add my personal stories and experience as an Asain in the America.
The biggest takeaway from this talk is to never judge someone by how they look. Every story matters. So many people tend to judge each other based on how they look or what they wear. One does not truly know someone once they start a conversation with someone. Her stories showed me that stereotypes on people are always wrong. I can definitely relate as because of my skin color people made fun of me for how I looked. To conclude, her stories were very inspirational and it sent a message to people who are biased and stereotypical
One takeaway that I got from this TED talk is that it shows how a lot of people are fooled by this so called single story. When people think of a race/ethnicity, age, or gender they set a specific stereotype for them. Like how in the TED talk when Adichie’s parents talked about Fide she began to define him and his family as poor. But later on when she visited them she saw that theres more then just a single story to him, he and his family knew how to make beautiful patterned baskets. This talk did help me to look at my narrative in a different way because how I write my narrative is how people will perceive me and learn about me. Like how Adichie mentioned the many stories of Americans, I feel like if I mention something differently in each paragraph of my narrative then people wouldn’t just have a single image of the person I am like.
One takeaway from this ted talk is that people usually listen to people’s single story and decide their whole life. For example, when Adichie’s parents were talking about their story, they just expected them to be poor. However, later one they learn that there are more stories behind the family when she visited them. I was able to learn a lesson from this just like this. Judging book by it’s cover is something that you shouldn’t be doing and learn how to listen to people more carefully.
One of the takeaways from the talk for me was that you can not judge someone or somethings just by hearing about once. The second takeaway from this talk was that you can be inspired by things you never saw in real life. This talk did inspire me to look at my literacy differently by showing me that you can wright about anythings you want no meter where you are. Also it showed that nobody can tell you what to write. And another takeaway is that you should always look at the other side of the medal, if one side of the medal is bad, than the other will be good and this goes to everything you see,read or hear