It was embarrassing that I had not heard about the brilliant young writer and MacArthur Fellow, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Yesterday, an African friend directed me to the young Nigerian’s 2009 Ted Talk. At the time she was only 32 but had already received a string of awards and commendations. The fifth of six children, whose father was a professor and mother a college administrator, her childhood did not lack intellectual stimulants.

Chimamanda Adichie

She begins her talk, titled The Danger of a Single Story, saying that as a child she read British and American children’s books in which people played in the snow and ate apples. When she began to write at age 7, the people in her stories all duplicated what those in the books did. For her, activities in books were what people did, never mind that there was no snow in Nigeria and that she ate mangos, not apples.  Chimamanda continues to illustrate how perceptions when repeated enough times become realities in one’s mind. Her parents had domestic help (a common thing among the better situated society) and she was made to understand that the help were poor. She became confused upon discovering that poor people could be creative and could make beautiful things.

What I loved about the presentation was the way she recorded her changes in perception. When she arrived in the States at 19 to attend college, many of the tables were turned as she became the instructor dispelling many stereotypes her peers had about her, Africa, the fact that she was fluent English. In one writing class the professor told her her novel was not “African enough,” as he obviously knew only one story about Africa. Later, on a trip to Mexico she found to her embarrassment that she had heeded the messages in the American media that presented Mexicans as inferior workers who fleeced the American system. What she saw in Guadalajara was people going about their daily business no different than people in every society, anywhere in the world. Information can educate and shift perceptions, but we know how stories about others are told and retold, and depending on who is doing the telling, the message can be positive or negative; and stereotypes only offer limitations. For instance, Chimamanda points to the teaching of North American history that skirts the period before the European arrival. Told from the Native American perspective the continent’s story obviously begins centuries earlier. The writer points out that every history has multiple entries. And the more stories are considered on any subject, the more rounded, more balanced the understanding thereof becomes. With the words: “When we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise,” Chimamanda concludes her presentation. How very true and wise: we really do regain a kind of paradise when we see a fuller picture of cultures, societies, and individuals.

Do listen to this fascinating TED Talk The Danger of a Single Story