The Danger of a Single Story was an amazing Ted Talk from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She talks about how harmful having a single perspective can be, and how it is important to have all sides of a story. She used a family she had as neighbors as an example. Adichie said that she saw that family as poor and really as nothing else. But when she actually went to her neighbor’s house for the first time, she realized that this family had abilities and skills she never knew about. This shows that her single perspective on her neighbor’s life was harmful but also incorrect. Using the points from this ted talk is important because we need to look at all sides of stories while conducting research. This also connects to our work in our research teams, because my groups focus is on indigenous knowledge in MOBOT. Specifically, how their knowledge is not recorded or really acknowledged when collecting plant specimens, so you could say that the plant specimens and data recorded is a single story from the person who collected it.
Who am I? What is my story? My story is quite complicated and starts at the earliest memory I have, which is my mother and father getting a divorce. I feel like this happening very early in my life has contributed to my strength and ability to deal with hard situations. But at the same time, I am also a very emotional person and always have been, it’s easy to make me cry, especially if someone else is crying. From my perspective, I also consider myself to be a kindhearted, animal loving, obsessed with music person. My story currently is that I am a 19-year-old college student while mentally trying to recover from the death of my mom.
Anyone could have a different perspective on me, depending on who they are. My friends and family would probably mostly agree with my perspective of myself. My stepmom’s dad who recently moved in at my dad’s house probably has a much different perspective of me. He probably just sees me as a quiet lazy teenager who never leaves the basement (where my room is). I would not want this to be the definitive story of me because it isn’t true. I just avoid my step-grandfather because he is annoying, so he doesn’t know much about me. His gaps of knowledge about me are quite large. Also considering our age difference contributes to a lot of differences. He doesn’t know a lot about my interests or what I do in my free time. So, his story of me would not be a full story whatsoever. This shows the point of Adichie as everyone has different perspectives of everything and we need to try to allow other perspectives in before making judgements.