Progress Monitoring: "The Danger of a Single Story"

Literature primarily shapes the understanding of children, while adults are less likely to construct their views of the world based on a single story.

By only exposing ourselves to a single story, we run the risk of constructing overly-simplistic understandings of other people and places.

Literature is reflective of the stories that are most popular and that people are most likely to identify with.

By only reading a single story, we cheat ourselves of experiencing different cultures from different perspectives.

“What this demonstrates, I think, is how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story, particularly as children.” (Paragraph 8)

“The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” (Paragraph 38)

“Like our economic and political worlds, stories too are defined by the principle of nkali: How they are told, who tells them, when they're told, how many stories are told, are really dependent on power.” (Paragraph 26)

“What if my roommate knew about the female lawyer who recently went to court in Nigeria to challenge a ridiculous law that required women to get their husband's consent before renewing their passports?” (Paragraph 47)

Adichie wants to show people how she has managed to avoid being influenced by a single story, so that they can do the same.

Adichie wants to show how important it is to acknowledge more than a single story in order to fully understand what you are unfamiliar with.

Adichie wants to prove how limited the United States’ understanding of other cultures is, as most of her experiences with single stories have been in the U.S.

Adichie wants to warn people that if they primarily consume stories of Western culture, they have likely been influenced by a single story.

“But it would never have occurred to me to think that just because I had read a novel in which a character was a serial killer that he was somehow representative of all Americans.” (Paragraph 33)

“Now, I've laughed every time I've read this. And one must admire the imagination of John Lok. But what is important about his writing is that it represents the beginning of a tradition of telling African stories in the West: A tradition of Sub-Saharan Africa as a place of negatives” (Paragraph 21)

“My American roommate was shocked by me. She asked where I had learned to speak English so well, and was confused when I said that Nigeria happened to have English as its official language.” (Paragraph 13)

“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.” (Paragraph 50)

Stories of Western culture are more popular because most people are unaware of the current work of African writers.

Stories of Western culture discuss a greater variety of experiences, while African stories are more limited.

Stories of Western culture are more readily available across the world, while there are fewer African writers and their stories are less accessible in other countries.

Stories of Western culture are more popular because more people can identify with them, while African stories provide limited identifiable experiences.