The Danger of a Single Story

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s eloquent talk explores how the stories we tell—and don’t tell—shape our understanding of others and ourselves. Drawing on her experience growing up in Nigeria and later studying in America, Adichie reveals how she internalized Western narratives as the only legitimate stories, writing about blue-eyed characters eating apples despite never seeing snow or tasting ginger beer. Her awakening came through discovering African writers who reflected her own reality, showing her that people like her could exist in literature.

The concept of the “single story” is deceptively simple but profoundly important: when we hear only one narrative about a person, place, or culture, we risk reducing complex realities to dangerous stereotypes. Adichie shows how this works bidirectionally—how Mexicans became only immigrants in American discourse, how Africans became only pitiful in Western media, and how she herself made assumptions about her Mexican roommate based on border-crossing stories. The single story, she argues, creates stereotypes not because they are untrue, but because they are incomplete.

In our era of social media echo chambers and algorithmic content curation, Adichie’s warning feels more urgent than ever. The talk offers a framework for approaching difference with intellectual humility and narrative curiosity. Her call to seek out multiple stories—to recognize that no culture or person can be reduced to a single narrative—is essential guidance for anyone seeking to engage across differences with empathy and nuance rather than stereotype and assumption.