POWER OF STORY
Chimamanda Adichie is a Nigerian writer born in the city of Enugu in Nigeria. She wrote, “THE DANGER OF A SINGLE STORY.” Adichie came to the United States at the age of 19 and attended college in the U.S.A. When I first read this story, it caught my attention on how stories can be powerful. A story can be influential that it impacts negative as well as a positive feature of a circumstance and case. A story can create stereotypes about culture and rejection. Are single stories threatening the regaining of true paradise?
A broad audience has read Andiche’s stories. However, stereotyping is prevalent in her stories. Here the author states, “the single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story” (Adichie 4). This statement is so true when you look around the world today. A stereotype is people’s social categorization. When stereotyping becomes negative, it can lead us to make wrongful judgments on an individual, which encourage prejudice attitudes.
The story shows the reader about one particular story that is narrated numerous times, letting us see a bad situation alone. I agree with this quote because it happens in everyday life since people only read and watch a single story on television, magazines, and newspapers. I recently saw on BBC news in South Africa xenophobia violence taking place with Nigerian. Still, despite the bad news, I also read somewhere a 22-year-old student developing a clean water system for rural South Africa. It’s so sad sometimes to only hear about the negative side and not the positive side of a story in every country.
Stories are important because they give us ideas and helps us understand what happens in the world, as Adichie quoted, “Many stories matter. Stories dispose and malign”. (Adichie 5) Stories hold the foundation for someone’s life, just like playing with fire and showing how dangerous it could be when stories are told unjustifiable. Also, like black/white lives matter story is relevant. For example, the editor and reporters are more concerned about selling a malign tale to an audience and not looking further for the best news yet to be published.
Multiple stories are somewhere waiting to be uncovered “that when we reject the single-story, then we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.”(Adichie 5) The word reject is powerful. Why listen to a unique story where we can disapprove of hearing all the negative aspects of that particular story. It will be much better if we are mindful of what we see and understand that it is not all to one side of the story. The narrative shows how influential a single story and true culture is expressed, advising us to more conscious of what we learn from a particular story about an individual or nation since it is possible to misjudge a story once told as a paradise. Despite the crime highlighted in my country, we are a multi-cultural diverse place exposing new tastes and experiences like carnival and religious events.
A single-story can be one point of view that can lead us into wrong assumptions. At the end of each story, it can lead us to misunderstand. Looking at the context of a single account will lead us to wrongful judgments.