Week One

The Danger of a Single Story

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speaks about how our perceptions of cultures and backgrounds that differ from ours are influenced by the most common narrative about that culture. When we are only exposed to one depiction of another group, it is hard to see people as individuals rather than caricatures. I appreciated how Adichie spoke of this reductivist POV in a non-judgemental way and explained how she had done the same in the past to others. Institutional biases are not so easy to dismantle without the widespread dissemination of narratives beyond the single story, and people who are willing to hear them.

I’ve heard the phrase “history books are written by the winners” often, and I realized listening to this talk that this biased documentation of history transcends beyond who won which battle, or whose strategy in war was more cunning; the winners can rewrite their opposition’s entire identities. Wounds from losing a battle are one thing, but implementing a single story that depicts the loser as lesser can sabotage their success for generations, long after the two groups are done fighting.