TEDtalks: Chimamanda Adichie - The Danger of a Single Story

Originally started to bring together the minds of those in Technology, Entertainment, and Design, TED has spearheaded the effort to again make the short speech an effective and important tool for conveying ideas. With over 1,100 filmed speeches in their inventory, TED presents the world with an overwhelming olio of subjects ranging from what makes us laugh to the future evolution of the human race to oceanic mysteries. They have asked some of the world's most interesting people to tell us about what they're passionate about. The speeches are usually 15 to 20 minutes long, entertaining and very informative. What you will glean from these talks and demonstrations is inspiration, mind expansion, and knowledge that the world is even bigger than you thought.

One particularly poignant speech that I watched recently was from a Nigerian author named Chimamanda Adichie. First of all, she's gorgeous so watching the speech wasn't difficult at all. But what she had to say was much more important than how she looked. She grew up reading children's books from the U.K. and eventually started writing her own stories that mimicked those books. She wrote about white children with blond hair drinking ginger beer and talking about the weather. These were her stories even thought she hadn't seen a white person, didn't know what ginger beer was, and never talked about Nigeria's unwavering hot weather. She had what she called a "Single Story" about how books and people were supposed to be. For an example, she told of the house boy that her family hired. Her mother always told her that the boy's family was poor. So, in her mind, that family's single story was that they were poor. It wasn't until she visited them in their home and saw that they made beautiful woven baskets out of raffia that she realized they don't have a single story. There are things that represent them other than being poor.  As she discovered African authors, she started changing her stories to fit what she knew, which was being Nigerian. She encouraged the crowd on hand to explore the things you think you know about and learn to reject the Single Story about anything and anyone. "Reject the single story and regain a bit of paradise." I will. Thanks, Chimamanda.

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http://www.ted.com/talks This is TED's home page.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html This isChimamanda's speech.