WEEK 2: TED TALKS

. THE DANGER OF A SINGLE STORY BY; CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE.
Ngozi Achidie is a Nigerian who grew up in a University campus in Eastern Nigeria, her father was a lecturer and her mother was an administrator. According to her, a single story occurs when a story is told of a people by concentrating only on the negative aspects of their history and not the positive side, on their failures, not on their success, on what they cannot do, not on what they can do. These stories according to her tend to affect us in our childhood if same stories are being circulated as we may grow up with the same mentality, seeing things the negative way without making allusion to the positive aspects, which is the danger of a single story. For instance, when Africa is being referred of, it is often seen as the land of darkness, misfortune harboring unfortunate beasts, poor by nature, fighting senseless wars, people who were meant to be exploited and dominated, people without a right of their own. She then proceed by letting us know that, every society has both positive and negatives aspects of their history and that banking on the negative ones will lead us to doom, but focusing on the positive ones will bring about improvements, changes in who we are and a general progress in our lives, just as she experienced “A Mental Shift” after reading Achebe’s novels, we too can do that.