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We occasionally categorize one's identity we sometimes only focus on one part of a person instead of understanding the details. The speaker says  " Africa came up, people turned to me. " This shows that she is being a representative for all of Africa,  in other words, people expected her to know what was going on in the entire continent of Africa even though she was from Nigeria. When People assume something we often make an overall assumption about a group of people and assume that they are all the same. People heard she was from Nigeria and associated her with Africa, people were only looking at one side of her, the fact that she was African and forgetting the other side,  the fact that she was  Nigerian. This connects to another part of her speech where she says "Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person."  This explains how we sometimes only look at one side of a person we don't always think about the other side of the story/ or the details. We occasionally focus on one side of a person's story and forget the other side of their story. This can become our single-story/only view of that person when there is another side of their story we don't know about.

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We tend to assume things of another person or place. A storyteller must tell the story in a complete way. Adichie was from the middle class. When she was 8 her family got a new house boy, that was not in the middle class. "His name was Fide. The only thing my mother told us about him was that his family was very poor. My mother sent yams and rice, and our old clothes, to his family. And when I didn't finish my dinner, my mother would say, "Finish your food! Don't you know? People like Fide's family have nothing." So I felt enormous pity for Fide's family." It was different for her because she was in the middle class, but for Fide all she thought of him was that he was poor. Sometimes all we think of Nigera Is that it is a poor place. But Adichie was in the middle class, and Nigera is not just a poor place there is beauty and life to it. We can not just assume things of a person or place because of certain stereotypes or what we hear.

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Adichie started reading around the age of 4, she explains “what I read were British and American children's books. I was also an early writer, and when I began to write, at about the age of seven, stories in pencil with crayon illustrations” She said. She wrote exactly the kinds of stories she was reading. All her characters were blue-eyed and white, they ate apples, they played in the snow, and they talked about the weather. Adichie says, “Despite the fact that I lived in Nigeria. I had never been outside Nigeria. We didn't have snow, we ate mangoes, and we never talked about the weather, because there was no need to.”

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People, especially children, see one thing then immediately think that everyone like that kind is like that. "My characters also drank a lot of ginger beer, because the characters in the British books I read drank ginger beer." This is an example of that, a single story. But when she saw African writers, different writers, the saved her "from having a single story of what books are." People need multiple stories and ideas to know the full idea of a concept.

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I was also an early writer, and when I began to write, at about the age of seven, , I wrote exactly the kinds of stories I was reading.

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Middle-class

Nigerian - African

Reader

Writer

Storyteller

Student

University student

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"I come from a conventional, middle-class Nigerian family. My father was a professor. My mother was an administrator.
Whenever Africa came up, people turned to me.But I did come to embrace this new identity, and in many ways I think of myself now as African."

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Too often a storyteller gives just one perspective, so it is important here when the speaker says she will tell the reader "a few personal stories". She provides multiple stories revealing a more complete view of her identity. I believe this is an example of using stories "to empower and humanize". The speaker tells stories to complete our understanding of how various stories together give a more complete picture of a person or place. Putting the good stories together with tales of challenges makes her relate-able and believable.

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Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person. The Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti writes that if you want to dispossess a people, the simplest way to do it is to tell their story and to start with, "secondly."

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"Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity. "

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"I'm a storyteller. And I would like to tell you a few personal stories about what I like to call "the danger of the single story."

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The danger of a single story

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Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice -- and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.