Single Story

As I was scanning through articles and lectures on multicultural education, I found a TED talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche entitled The Danger of a Single Story. She began her talk describing herself as a reader, even from an early age. Growing up on a college campus in Nigeria, she typically read British or American stories. Then as she began writing her own stories, her characters had the same culture as the ones she read about. As a child, she thought that stories were only about white characters who talk about the weather, which was nothing like the culture she was immersed in. She continued telling antidotes about her families house servant and her roommate and college and other experiences she had over her life, but they all had one message in common, the power of a single story. She then goes on to explain that these single stories are basically stereotypes. She exemplifies this by mentioning some negatives events in her life and states that by focusing on only the negative events flattens who she is. She has had many experiences in her life that has shaped who she is. She then stated the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that the are incomplete. They make one story become the only story. This relates strongly to the part in the book Affirming Diversity: The Sociopoiltical Context of Multicultural Education about hybridity and how it isn't just about the culture they look like they should be in, but also how they identify. Also the book states that "the danger of considering culture lies in overgeneralizing its effects"(158). This talk really focuses on expanding what it means in real life to over generalize its effects.  As educators we need to be certain to not give our students a single story. Whether they have the same culture as us or not, all students have a million stories and all are different from student to student and all shape the way our students will learn. It is also important for us to explain to our students to not fall into the trap of the single story.