Chimamanda Adiche on the Dangers of a Single Story
The Danger of a Single Story is a Story told by the Nigerian Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche. In this story she talks about how during her childhood growing up in Nigeria. That her discovery of Nigerian authors such as Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye changed her perception about the impressions of books and stories in particular. Up until this point in her life has a child she had only read foreign books therefore she assumed that all books must contain stories and characters that were foreign. Of this she would say "Because I had read books in which all characters were foreign. 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."-Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche. It wasn’t until she had started reading the works of African authors such as Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye that she began to realize that " because of the works of Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye I went t through a mental shift in my perception of literature realized that people like me girls with skin the color of chocolate whose kinky hair could not form ponytails could also exist in literature"- Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche. ultimately she concluded that by becoming aware of and reading the works of these Nigerian authors she was saved from the danger of a single story for her in which literature can have a place for everyone, but the true danger is that when we hear one story about a person or country or about people we risk making critical mistakes and misunderstanding each other. She brings up the story of their housemaid being very poor until one day she visited the house maids home and his brother had a very nice handbag and then she learned the lesson that just because you are poor does not make you incapable of doing things like making a hand bag or driving a car this misinterpretation also taught her just because you are poor doesn’t mean you cannot function in society the same as wealthier people. She also mentions the story of her American college roommate who believed that Africa was a primitive continent and as a result she assumed that Chimamanda did not know how to use a stove or that Africa had no culture. Chimamanda ultimately concludes that the danger of a single story is that when you describe a person a country or a people has one thing over and over again they then become that one thing instead of the true sum of their parts. For example her roommate didn’t know about contemporary African music or the heart operation that took place in a hospital in the Nigerian city of Lagos everyday or that most African nations are just as modern as other places in the world.
All throughout history we know this to be true and such is the case of the yellow Journalism peddled by Hurst and Pulitzer that fueled the public sentiment that led to the Spanish American war. Up until this point in American history journalism was all about the public good for it played a pivotal role from the early beginnings of our republic this country was built on the journalistic writings of Thomas Paine whose essay Common Sense galvanized the colonist to fight a bloody and fierce revolution that dared to make all men free and self governing, to the writings of William Lloyd Garrison and Fredrick Douglas who turned the conscious of America to the sins of slavery up until this point in American history Journalism always provided people with the correct information that allowed society to lead free and self governing lives. Until 1898 when Pulitzer and Hurst decided that they owned the information and fueled by greed and arrogance decided that they owned the information and would therefore use it to pawn the public into a feeding frenzy that lined their pockets. By publishing a single story that ultimately blamed the Spanish government of Spain for destroying the Maine a series of dangerous chain of events led to an unjust war. In the end the ultimate shame besides fighting an unjust war, was the fact that Hurst and Pulitzer became wealthier and that for the first time the press instead of being an informative means to society became a tool of propaganda that manipulated society. All because of the dangers of a single story unfortunately this would not be the first or the last time that this would happen. In 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis president John F Kennedy was talking about how the summer before he had read the book called the guns of august in which he ultimately concluded that the causes of world war I were due to fact that the English the French and the Germans due to their own udder stupidity, idiosyncrasies unnecessarily went to war and a result thirteen million men women and children were killed in a war that did not have to happen. I relay Kennedy and Chimamanda stories back to the dangers of a single story because when we believe in a single story about a person and country we set ourselves up to deceive ourselves from seeing the ultimate truth that we seek. Or as President Kennedy once put it “we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought”. Ultimately the danger we face when we believe in a single story instead of searching for the stories that give us the truth is our own prefabricated interpretation of the facts that takes us away from the truth and no longer provides society with the information that makes it free and self governing.
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