Armonie Johnson
Dr. Smith
The TED talk is spoken by the writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie who’s from Nigeria. She talks about different life events that happened to her, shaping her into the person she is now and her journey with writing. She speaks about how things are reduced to a single narrative and not looked at from different perspectives. A prime example that she used were how people viewed people living in Africa. It is also shown on television in a negative way such as them starving, having no food or water, and the things they do and eat in their culture. They only see the negative things about Africa and not the good things about it as well such as the rich and beautiful homes. This single narrative isn’t only placed on Africans they are placed on how people view others, lifestyles, and cultures.
One single story can deeply affect how you understand the world if you only look at things from one perspective not through many lenses. Adichie’s father was a professor and her mother was an administrator. She had started to write at a young age when she started to realize the characters were white children with blue eyes and blonde hair, instead of like her. Ngozi used the example of an American serial killer. Saying after she read that book does it make her think that all Americans were bad people or all killers? Her main point was to not judge a book by its cover. You know how it is always put on the frontline that people who live in Nigeria have no water or food and their poor, but it’s not also being told that Nigeria has nice houses too.
Most importantly, I agree with the main idea of Adichie’s TED talk, that everyone views things differently from different perspectives.