The Danger of a Single Story

The Danger of a Single Story is a short speech explaining the dangers and valid examples of people who stereotype others. The speaker talks about how she grew up in a wealthy family in Nigeria. Most people alone stereotype Nigerians as poor Africans living in the third world. Although expected to be stereotyped, she also has formed a single story of the help her family had. She automatically felt as if she needed to pity the house boy and his family and as if they were capable of nothing. So when the house boy’s mother showed her a basket she had made, she was instantly surprised because she had thought they were useless. The tables had been turned when she had gone away to college in the US and her roommate had instantly formed a single story of her for being from Nigeria. Her roommate thought she was poor and unintelligent. Before going to the US, she hadn’t even realized she classified as an African. Most of her life, people looked at her with a formed single story out look of her and had expectations for her and her kind. She pushes limits to try and prove everyone wrong. But when she visits Mexico, she catches herself forming her own single story of Mexicans and how they should live their lives. She had felt embarrassed. Another day, when she was speaking at a University, a student felt sorry for her, thinking all Nigerian men were rapists. So she told the boy, “ I had just read a novel called American Psycho, and it is such a shame that young Americans were serial killers.” She knew this wasn’t true but she definitely made listeners reconsider their thoughts. Every side to a person is what makes them who they are and looking at the single story is degrading and being blind to reality.
    The theme of this speech is single stories and stereotyping. The speaker explains to the listeners how single stories affect the victims of this action. She shows how it is to be on both sides of the single story. There is only one theme to this story and it is an important one. The author expresses single stories as the main theme very well.