The Danger of a Single Story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Summary)

 

The Danger of a Single Story
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Detailed Summary

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian novelist, nonfiction writer, and short story writer. She was raised on a university campus in a conventional middle-class Nigerian family. Her mother was an administrator. From a young age, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie began reading books, particularly British and American children’s literature.

At the age of seven, she began writing stories in pencil, accompanied by crayon illustrations. Her characters were white, with blue eyes, and they lived in snowy landscapes where they ate apples and were happy to see the sun. But Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is Nigerian, and in Nigeria, people eat mangoes, and there is no snow. This, she suggests, highlights the danger of listening to a single story.

When Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was a child, she primarily read Western literature. However, when she started reading African books, particularly the works of Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye, her perception and imagination changed. In their works, she encountered characters who had chocolate-colored skin and kinky hair.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gives another example of the danger of having a single story. In her house, there was a live-in domestic help system. At the age of eight, a rural boy named Fide came to work as a houseboy. Her mother would often tell her that Fide’s family was poor. As a result, they would send yams, rice, and clothes to Fide’s family. If Chimamanda had leftovers, her mother would scold her by comparing their life to Fide’s family, who could not afford such food.

One day, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and her family visited Fide’s family. She was shocked to see a beautifully woven basket made from dyed raffia, crafted by Fide’s brother. She had expected Fide’s family to be so poor that they could not afford such a thing. This experience made her realize the danger of reducing a person or a community to a single story.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie shares another experience from her time as a university student in the US, when her American roommate held stereotypical notions about Nigerians. Her roommate found it hard to believe that Adichie was fluent in English and that she listened to Mariah Carey’s music rather than Nigerian tribal songs. Instead of treating her as an equal, the roommate felt sympathy and pity toward her. Everyone treated Adichie as simply "African," not Nigerian, and most Americans thought of Africa as a single country rather than a continent made up of diverse nations, cultures, and people. They also had preconceived notions of Africa as a place filled with poverty, violence, and uncivilized people. Once again, Adichie emphasized the dangers of believing in a single story.

Adichie also cited an example of her American professor, who criticized her characters for being too similar to English characters. In his view, the characters belonged to the middle class, had access to cars and education—things he did not associate with Africa. In his stereotypical view, Africans were illiterate and poor, facing starvation.

Adichie shared that her grandparents lost their lives in a refugee camp, her cousin Polle died due to lack of healthcare, and her closest friend, Okoloma, died in a plane crash. Her parents struggled with low salaries under a repressive military regime. Yet, despite these hardships, Chimamanda Adichie had a happy childhood filled with love and care. If she had only focused on her family's struggles and hardships, people might have assumed she had a traumatic childhood. This, she argued, would be a “single story” that is far removed from the complex reality of her life.

This is dangerous because if we cling to stereotypical notions, they distort the truth and obscure the reality of people’s lives. The danger of a single story is that it creates incomplete and misleading perceptions, ultimately reducing people to simplistic narratives that don't reflect their true complexity.