The Danger of a Single Story- Chimamanda Adichie

Chimamanda Adichie is a famous African writer. She has been a revolutionary author from this culture, who is capable to write novels that can be understood by everyone and represents the story behind Nigeria. She says that while growing up, she never imagined becoming a well-known writer, given her middle class status. The first time she stepped outside Africa was when she went to study abroad, to the USA. Inspired by her roommate’s thoughts and stereotypes, the author began writing novels that depicted how honorable are Nigerian people within world history. Through her novels, she wanted to show that world how her culture and society truly was: what their living habits were, and how they are not a primitive group like many people think. The author fears that a single story robs people since it creates stereotypes and biased interpretations of her nation and other African countries. She says that “single stories create 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”. This means that with stereotypes, people only see one side of the story, and neglect the fact that there is another one. So in this particular case, new perspectives regarding Nigeria were needed. This led the author to make most of her characters, white people or British. This is somewhat rare, because when one gets the opportunity to write about given culture, they create characters pertaining from the place, not the other way around. She wants to portray the scars that colonialism caused within African nations. When achieving all of this, one can now understand why only listening to one side of a story is not having all the information, and it’s not accurate. Chimamanda is now a well-known author that has used the prejudices pressed against herself and her culture to portray the true meaning of Nigerian culture.