Please watch the following TED Talk – https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en – and leave a comment featuring one or two takeaways from the talk. Consider how this talk might affect your writing your fiction piece. Your response should be at least three sentences long.
24 thoughts on “Classwork: TED Talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie”
Comments are closed.
Hearing Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speak on the ways single stories rob us from experiencing all stories and enforce stereotypes made me reevaluate the narratives I’ve heard as a child. Specifically, early in my high school career, I discovered that the pyramids of Egypt were practically beside large cities- not in the middle of nowhere. Although this may not be as harmful as other single stories that Adichie mentions, single stories still make us overlook other perspectives that would otherwise inform our perception of a person, place, or story. Also, I’ll take into consideration the “secondly” aspect that she mentions when writing my own piece: figuring out a place to appropriately start and frame my story.
One takeaway I got from Adichie’s Ted Talk is to hold ourselves accountable and recognize when we too are at fault for having preconceived notions of someone or something based off of a singular story. Sometimes it feels inevitable, having been fed these single stories so often, whether in our history classes or through lack of representation in tv. But we can, and should, always make it a point to seek diverse stories, in literature or any form of art or media.
After watching Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talk about the effects a single story can impact the way a person can perceive things. For example, she states that when she went to college her roommate was surprised that she was able to speak English and listened to western music, mainly because growing up she was only exposed to a single story of Nigerians being helpless. I feel like one way this talk can impact my fictional piece is by making sure I am able to emphasize a moral/theme in a way that is well rounded and socially aware.
One take away from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “The danger of a single story” is that the stories and narratives that you consume shape your understanding of the world. More specifically the way you view your relationship to other people. When Adichie mentioned how some people believe that people from Africa live in poverty and need help from “a kind white foreigner”. This communicates and to an extent emphasizes that some people are inferior, and others are superior. This will affect my writing piece by I have to really think about how I represent my characters, the communities they come from and how they will impact the reader.
One takeaway I learned from Adichie’s TED talk is that we all are like the roommate that she had. All of us are lacking knowledge in some areas. For her roommate, she lacked knowledge about greater Africa and that although that some counties have a bad political climate middle class families do exist and have modern amenities. This can help in my writing by putting the time in to research the places i’m writing about to actually understand what it’s like to be in and live in those places.
A takeaway I learned from Ngozi Adichie’s talk was that a single story can blind you from reality. Her roommate fell victim to this when she instantly assumed that Adichie did not know anything about western culture. She was a prime example of how most people in America view Africa. This really helped me in my writing since I will try to now give more than one perspective as I am writing the story.
TED talk with Ngozi Adishie held a lot of truth. Our perspectives are inevitably biased. It is impacted by how and where we are raised. Even the ideas of your neighbor could be extremely different than yours. Opposing ideas from people of different parts of the globe could be positive, but also negative. It can create false ideas in peoples minds, which can lead to discrimination and stereotypes. Or the diversity of the different ideas of multiple minds can be beautiful. Our world has modernized where authors are not contributing to the “only story” Adishie speaks about in her speech. Authors contribute diversity and a place for imagination that many can relate with. Not just the blonde hair, blue eye, ginger beer drinking characters.
Watching Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s thoughtful Ted Talk was eye opening. One takeaway I got from watching this was how much perspective can vary between individuals. While Adichie was used to listening to Mariah Carey and other pop artists, her roommate thought it was odd that she didn’t listen to tribal music. Another takeaway from this talk was how we shouldn’t let a single story affect how we perceive a group or even a person. It is easy to let ourselves judge someone else based on something we have heard but that might not be the entire story. It is important to check ourselves and prevent impulsive judgment. When writing my own fiction piece, I will be sure to provide a deeper insight into my character to prevent any miscommunication between me and the readers.
After watching the TED talk I learned how we as youth are very vulnerable and that leads us to grow/shift perspectives of things. She talks about when she was only exposed to foreign stories and how she only followed through the ideas the stories were saying despite not being able to relate to them. Later when she starts reading African books her ideas were widened. It’s important to not be so narrowminded and to be able to explore other types of writing, thinking or ideas. So in my own fiction piece, I will try to incorporate ideas that I can also relate to and not just the ideas I want the characters to have.
One takeaway I got from Adichie’s Ted Talk was how easily we all can make the mistake of having a single story perspective. Often times we don’t realize that we do this by listening to the media or listening to others who also do not know the entire story. I think we as young adults do this because we are constantly on the internet reading stories or watching videos that are biased. We then come up with our own biased opinion and we share that. The same way Adichie encouraged the audience, we should become informed and not ignorant to many things happening around us. She spoke about her own experience when she went to Mexico and how she had formed her opinion on what the country was like based on what the media had said. Being there was one of the most eye-opening experiences for her because she realized it was so much more than the way it was portrayed. She was able to reflect on her past in her speech and tell others to not do the same thing she did.
One takeaway I took from this Ted Talk is that stereotypes of different nations affect how we those who come from those nations. I too have been a victim of the single story when I think back to my perspective of Native Americans as a young child. Due to the nature of Native Americans being talking about in the past tense, I believed that Native Americans were extinct and no longer lived in this world. I was surprised to find out later on that Native Americans are still alive and I felt deceived by the stories I was told. A single story is harmful to young children discovering the world as it creates false narratives that will carry on into their adult life. I admire that Ngozi Adichie was able to recognize the single story perspective that affected her perspective of Mexicans and the way she overcame her bias. I will consider the stereotypes I may portray in my short story and try to defy the popular image of certain groups of people for the sake of telling another story.
Adichie’s TED Talk discussed the importance of stories to people, especially the ones that are considered as “single story”, which really could affect one reader’s views and perspectives toward certain things, such as how Nigerian’s people living conditions would be, and how they were considered as “Africans” when they came to the United States because of their skin color and the stereotypes that have spread around the country. Moreover, from this video, I realized the significance of writing, and diverse stories and ideas or maybe views are really influential instead of writing something such as a “single story” by following the same stereotypes and guidelines from others.
Something that I took away from Chimamanda Adichie’s talk is that children’s literature is not representative enough of cultures and countries other than America and Britain. When I was growing up, I was able to identify with the books that I was reading in my American elementary school. A young and impressionable Chimamanda was conditioned to believe that people like her would never exist in literature because they had to be about white foreigners. More diverse stories about various cultures should be integrated into literature in order to allow all children to feel represented and to help children from different cultures understand each other better. Americans have been fed a single story about Africa; that it is a negative place with miserable people who are constantly at war and fighting disease. Just like anywhere else, countries in Africa have pain, but they also have beauty. It is vital that Americans unlearn the single story that they have about Africa and learn about the positive side too. I will ensure that the time and place of my story is accurately presented, and that the character’s lives align with this setting.
After watching the Ted Talk, I noticed that Chimamanda Adichie’s had a new perspective on how she writes her stories. She always wrote similar to American, Britain novels because those were the novels she usually read. However, she shifted away from writing a single story about different cultures because there are so many things to learn about that you may not know of. A single story won’t allow you to expand your ideas since you’re always being told about the negatives where you tend to forget about the positives that are shown in different cultures.
This TED talk, by Adichie, makes the listener aware of alternate perceptions and realities that they may not have been initially aware of. This can help cast a spotlight on any misconceptions or untrue perceptions of people, places, or things. This can be used to my advantage in writing in a way a character may be contained by his/her misconceptions or improper perceptions, and by exposing how a liberated set of perceptions is greater in value.
I actually watched this Ted Talk before in High School, and it was impressive that I picked up on much more information that I missed than when I watched it the first time. I noticed that Adichie’s main focus was the lost information and perspectives from reading a single story, rather than her just saying “Oh, don’t believe only one perspective!” It is more broad than that. Great writers and story tellers look at anything from multiple perspectives – this broadens your horizons which in turn – boosts your writing as you have more information and knowledge on whatever you’re writing about. This can help in my writing by addressing the perspectives of different characters in different environments – and tie in how my character’s actions affect them rather than discussing my character by himself.
After watching Adichie’s Ted talk, it made me realize that there are multiple sides to a thing or a story. The diversity of thought is not better learned from the singularity of the story told from someone’s mouth. The world is complex and to understand it better you have to go out and discover different sides. Nowadays, many people are like her roommate, using popular thought to understand the world. In own fiction piece, I found that I have abandoned the plausibility of the story in my obsession with the main idea. So Adichie’s story made me realize the need to think about the content of my novel in a multifaceted way and not to create it in pursuit of a perfect ending.
One takeaway from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Tedtalk is the importance of acknowledging how there is never a single story of anything. We have to realize that we are biased in our own ways and our understanding of things is going to be very different from someone else who grew up in a different environment along with other factors beyond our control and that’s okay. Despite our stories being inevitably biased, when we allow other people to read our story and hear our voice, we create diversity and we break those stereotypes. I liked the line where she says though stereotypes may be true, they are incomplete and that will always be the case. There are simply too many stories for one to be the truth.
after watching this ted talk it made me realize people are very easily swayed and blindly believe whatever is in a piece of text that they have seen from when they were little to now still believe that. Many people are close minded and don’t bother to see the many different viewpoints only focus on the one that they resonate with, which is something I tried to do with my short story having a point of view that everyone can follow and not giving them much information to go by, that will make them all come to same the conclusion that I envisioned while still being interesting to everyone else even if the ending is not something that everyone will agree with
After watching Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Ted Talk, The Dangers of a Single Story, there were many lessons that I took away after watching that I have never realized before. For example, if I were to hear a story from one of my friends, it then leads me into judging a person who did not even get a chance to explain their reasoning behind an action. This could often lead to great misunderstanding and also in severe cases it can lead to stereotypes because not only it can affect one person, it can effect a group of people. As a result of the Ted Talk, I will try my best to not judge someone after hearing something about them until I hear their side of their story.
After watching the ted talk, my takeaway was how important different perspectives and viewpoints are and how dangerous only viewing one viewpoint is to ones idea of something. I had actually watched this in Highschool, and I remember my takeaway being to involve different perspectives in my writing in order to not box my characters in a prison of stereotypes; whether that be racial stereotypes or physical ones.
While carrying multiple viewpoints is not only important in writing but also in how we treat others that we meet.
After watching Ngozi Adichie’s Ted Talk, I learned that people are too quick to stereotype someone or something such as a culture. People’s perception on a culture can easily be swayed by a single statement they hear. Instead of researching further on the topic people hear one thing and that is engraved in their mind limiting their knowledge and creating a stereotype.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk is really insightful as it is evident of the dangers of technology, especially from the perspective of young children. Children today are able to access networks of people who are freely communicating their ideas to the world, good or bad. As such, these impressionable children are put in the same position as Adichie, perhaps even more dangerous given the ease of access and depth of ideas. In a time when there is so much information out there that is accessible in a matter of seconds, misinformation is bound to occur. It is important that children are taught to not believe everything they see or hear unless proven firsthand.