In her world-renowned TED Talk, The Danger of a Single Story, Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie warns of the critical misunderstanding that comes with adopting a single story. "My American roommate was shocked by me," she recounts. "She asked where I had learned to speak English so well, and was confused when I said that Nigeria happened to have English as its official language. She asked if she could listen to what she called my "tribal music," and was consequently very disappointed when I produced my tape of Mariah Carey. My roommate had a single story of Africa [where] there was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way, no possibility of feelings more complex than pity, no possibility of a connection as human equals." Her roommate adopted this view not so much because she wasn 't capable of grappling with the idea of a multi-faceted Africa but rather because doing so would have demanded an understanding, because it would have demanded effort, because it wouldn 't have been
In her world-renowned TED Talk, The Danger of a Single Story, Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie warns of the critical misunderstanding that comes with adopting a single story. "My American roommate was shocked by me," she recounts. "She asked where I had learned to speak English so well, and was confused when I said that Nigeria happened to have English as its official language. She asked if she could listen to what she called my "tribal music," and was consequently very disappointed when I produced my tape of Mariah Carey. My roommate had a single story of Africa [where] there was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way, no possibility of feelings more complex than pity, no possibility of a connection as human equals." Her roommate adopted this view not so much because she wasn 't capable of grappling with the idea of a multi-faceted Africa but rather because doing so would have demanded an understanding, because it would have demanded effort, because it wouldn 't have been