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right0The Danger of a Single Story0The Danger of a Single Storyleft-45720000right451485Name:020000Name:Lesson: To demonstrate an understanding of the text ‘The Danger of a Single Story’. To identify the perspective Adichie has on identity.Do it nowLook at the pictures below. What do they all have in common?________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________New knowledgeThe title of the text we are going to read is ‘The Danger of the Single Story.’ Based upon the work we completed in our Do it now task, what do you think the single story might be and why might this be considered dangerous.__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born the fifth of six children in the town of Nsukka in south-eastern Nigeria, where the university of Nigeria is situated. Her father was a professor of statistics at the university and her mother was the university’s first female registrar.Adichie studied medicine and pharmacy at the University of Nigeria for a year and a half. Then she left Nigeria to study communications and political science in the USA: Now she divides her time between Nigeria, where she teaches writing workshops and the United States.She has published poetry and fiction and her novels have won several awards. For example, her first novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003) was awarded the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book (2005). Adichie says of feminism and writing, ‘I think of myself as a storyteller, but I would not mind at all if someone were to think of me as a feminist writer…I’m very feminist in the way I look at the world, and that world view must somehow be part of my work.’In 2009, Adichie delivered this speech at a TED conference. She speaks about the power of storytelling and the danger of a single view.Let’s start by listening to the TEDX talk. The Danger of a Single Story by Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieSummaryAdichie, a successful novelist, delivered this speech at a TED conference. She Speaks about the power of storytelling and the danger of a single view.1I’m a storyteller. And I would like to tell you a few personal stories about what I like2to call “the danger of the single story.” I grew up on a university campus in eastern3Nigeria. My mother says that I started reading at the age of two, although I think four4is probably closer to the truth. So I was an early reader, and what I read were British5and American children’s books.6I was also an early writer, and when I began to write, at about the age of seven,7stories in pencil with crayon illustrations that my poor mother was obligated to read, 8I wrote exactly the kind of stories I was reading; all my characters were white and 9blue-eyed, they played in the snow, they ate apples, and they talked a lot about the10weather, how lovely it was that the sun had come out.11Now, this despite the fact that I lived in Nigeria. I had never been outside Nigeria. 12We didn’t have snow, we ate mangoes, and we never talked about the weather, 13because there was no need to… .14What this demonstrates, I think, is how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the 15face of a story, particularly as children. Because all I had to read were books in 16which characters were foreign, I had become convinced that books by their very 17nature had to have foreigners in them and had to be about things with which I could18not personally identify. Now, things changed when I discovered African books. 19There weren’t many of them available, and they weren’t quite as easy to find as the 20foreign books.21But because of writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye, I went through a mental 22shift in my perception of literature. I realised that people like me, girls with skin the 23colour of chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form ponytails, could also exist in24literature. I started to write about things I recognised.25Now, I loved those American and British books I read. They stirred my imagination.26They opened up new worlds for me. But the unintended consequence was that I 27did not know that people like me could exist in literature. So what the discovery 28of African writers did for me was this: It saved me from having a single story of what 29books are.30I come from a conventional, middle-class Nigerian family. My father was a professor.31My mother was an administrator, And so we had, as was the norm, live-in domestic32help, who would often come from nearby rural villages. So, the year I turned eight,33we got a new house boy. His name was Fide. The only thing my mother told us 34about him was that his family was very poor. My mother sent yams and rice, and 35our old clothes, to his family. And when I didn’t finish my dinner, my mother would36say, “Finish your food! Don’t you know? People like Fide’s family have nothing.” 37So I felt enormous pity for Fide’s family.38Then one Saturday, we went to his village to visit, and his mother showed us a 39beautifully patterened basked made of dyed raffia that his brother had made, I was40startled. It had not occurred to me that anybody in his family could actually make41something. All I had heard about them was how poor they were, so that it had 42become impossible for me to see them as anything else but poor. Their poverty 43was my single story of them.44Years later, I thought about this when I left Nigeria to go to university in the United45States. I was 19. My American roommate was shocked by me. She asked where46I had learned to speak English so well, and was confused when I said that Nigeria47happened to have English as its official language. She asked if she could listen to 48what she called my “tribal music”, and was consequently very disappointed when I 49produced my tape of Mariah Carey.50She assumed that I did not know how to use a stove.51What struck me was this: She had felt sorry for me even before she saw me. Her 52default position toward me, as an African, was a kind of patronizing, well-meaning 53pity. My roommate had a single story of Africa; a single story of catastrophe. In this54single story, there was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way, no55possibility of feelings more complex than pity, no possibility of a connection as 56human equals…57So, after I had spent some years in the U.S. as an African, I began to understand my58roommate’s response to me. If I had not grown up in Nigeria, and if all I knew about59Africa were from popular images, I too would think that Africa was a place of 60beautiful landscpaes, beautiful animals, and incomprehensible people, fighting61senseless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS, unable to speak for themselves and62waiting to be saved by a kind, white foreigner. I would see Africans in the same way63that I, as a child, had seen Fide’s family…64But I must quickly add that I too am just as guilty in the question of the single story. A 65few years ago, I visited Mexico from the U.S. The political climate in the U.S. at the66time was tense, and there were debates going on about immigration. And, as often67happens in America, immigration became synonymous with Mexicans. There were68endless stories of Mexicans as people who were fleecing the healthcare system, 69sneaking across the border, being arrested at the border, that sort of thing.70I remember walking around on my first day in Guadalajara, watching the people71going to work, rolling up tortillas in the marketplace, smoking, laughing. I remember72first feeling slight surprise. And then, I was overwhelmed with shame. I realised73that I had been so immersed in the media coverage of Mexcians that they had 74become one thing in my mind, the abject immigrant. I had bought into the single story 75of Mexicans and I could not have been more ashamed of myself.76So that is how to create a single story, show a people as one thing, as only one thing,77over and over again, and that is what they become….78Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to79malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can 80break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.83The American writer Alice Walker wrote this about her Southern relatives who had 84moved to the North. She introduced them to a book about the Southern life that they85had left behind. “They sat around, reading the book themselves, listening to me 86read the book, and a kind of paradise was regained.”87I would like to end with this thought: That when we reject the single story, when we88realise that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of 89paradise.Pen to paperWhat is Adichie’s perspective on the construction of identity?PerspectiveEvidence (highlight the key techniques that help to present this perspective)The writer, Adichie, believes the single story is a dangerous narrative and that reading stories can widen our frame of referenceAdichie’s experience with stories early on.Anecdote: FideAnecdote: universityAnecdote: MexicoThe limit of a single story vs the power of multiple stories to widen our perspectives.New knowledgeLook at the following paragraph about Adichie’s perspective on her early experiences with stories.Adichie reflects upon her early experience of the single story and how vulnerable this made her in her understanding of herself and the wider world. This is evident when she writes ‘all my characters were white and blue-eyed’. The use of the adjectives ‘white’ and ‘blue-eyed’ denote an ethnicity that is different to her own but are referred to to emphasise that the stories she read only contained characters with this appearance – an appearance different to her own. This affected her view on the world when she stated ‘I had become convinced that books by their very nature had to have foreigners in them and had to be about things with which I could not personally identify.’ The use of the verb ‘convinced’ alludes to the idea that the regularity of stories containing characters with this appearance made her feel as though they were the only narratives available. Her struggle with this is evident when she classifies these characters as ‘foreigners’, the noun emphasizing that they are unlike her and that as a result she could ‘not personally identify’ with them, the clause implying a lack of connection to such narratives and a sense of vulnerability with regard to her own identity within the fictional world.WHAT?HOW?WHY?Pen to paperNow construct your own WHAT HOW WHY paragraph analyzing an alternative perspective Adichie holds on the danger of the single story.WHAT?What is this perspective?HOW?How do you know? What evidence do you have?What methods has Adichie used to help her convey this? WHY?Why has Adichie employed these methods? What is revealed about her perspective?________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ReflectionTo what extent do you agree with Adichie and her perspective on the danger of a single story. Would you say your experience is similar growing up or do you think more stories are on offer now that reflect different cultures and ethnicities?______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ................
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