Katie Grover 3^rd hour

“The Danger of a Single Story”

1.       Chimamanda family’s was a family from Nigeria. Chimamanda learned to read at 4, and write at 7. She was a very fast learner.   She had never been outside of Nigeria to experience the real world around her. She would read English and British books and sometimes even write her own.  Since she only read English books she was convinces that she could not relate to them, also that the books had to have foreign in it.  She had a dad who was a professor and a mom who was an administrator. When she turned 8 they got a new house boy and all she knew about him was that he had a very poor family. They would send food and clothes to him. Chimamanda’s family was a very caring family.

3.       The media can change things and change it to a different side of view to make it sound all different.  The media changed the “single story” so everyone who read it and would read it a different way and pass it on to other people. They would spread the word of the side of view they read the text. Then everyone interpreted the story a different way from different perspectives.

6.   The dangers of a “single story” perspective is that people interpret stories their own way and change them when they tell them to other people.  Then we will never know the whole story and never can know what fully happened.

A quote response:

I agree with the quote “The single story created stereotypes and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story”.  I can relate to this because I have gotten told a story and favorite a side but when I go to tell others I say it on the side I favor, I change the story to make the persons side I am on look and sound good. People have done this with many stories especially in the past.  Another example of this is that before starting the Africa unit I didn’t know much about Africa except that they are a poor continent.  Now after studying lots of the countries I have learned more that not every country is a poor as people make it sound. People change the stories to favor sides and make people sound good.  Sometimes we will never know the whole story.