There were so many parts of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Ted Talk “The Danger of a Single Story” that moved me, it’s difficult to know exactly where to begin this journal entry.
But I suppose if I have to start somewhere, it should be on the issue of power. During her talk, Chimamanda Adichie recounts an interaction with a university student who had read her novel. The student assumed that because the father in Adichie's first novel—who happened to be Nigerian—was a physical abuser, then all Nigerian men must also be absuers. It never occurred to this student that the single-story of Adichie's character might be the exception to men in Nigeria, not the rule.
Adichie counters the student's assumption by explaining that although she had just read the novel American Psycho, it would have never occurred to her to think that the single-story of a serial killer was representative of all Americans. She says: “Because of America’s cultural and economic power, I had many stories of America. I had read Tyler and Updike and Steinbeck and Gaitskill. I did not have a single story of America.”
These words hit home for me, as they took me back to our most recent journal entry on Orientalism. In writing that journal, I came to the stark realization that we, as Americans, have allowed ourselves to become a hegemonic power on the world stage.