Here's a single story. Beware, it's dangerous.

You there. With the computer. You should know two things before you read this. One thing is that I have nothing against Mexican immigrants. That may sound a bit random and misplaced, but I assure you, it isn't. My little discourse here mentions them a few times, occasionally in a rather bad light, and I don't want anything taken the wrong way. A second thing is that this post is quite long. Don't mind it, it's an amazing read. That is all.

Chimamanda Adichie retains within her person not only an almost unbearably amazing accent, but provocative ideas of the dangers of "a single story," while inadvertently mentioning the ease of changing viewpoints about said stories.

First, foremost, and so forth, Adichie centers her argument around an anecdote based in her trip to Mexico one fine year. Or week. Whatever it was. Anyways, she says in an unnecessarily long quote: "I had been so immersed in the media coverage of Mexicans that they had become one thing in my mind: the abject immigrant. I had bought into the single story of Mexicans and I could not have been more ashamed of myself. So that is how you create a single story: show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become."

I'm going to go ahead and assume you understand the simple process in which a person can be taken under, so to speak, by propaganda (such as that of the Mexican immigrants in this time). Naturally, this has happened to all of us, which I why you'll understand it. Or die.

Anyways, the part both highlighted and emphasized is the fact that by going to Mexico and seeing the Mexicans there (who, mind you, were not in any way trying to emigrate), her whole outlook on Mexican immigrants was completely changed. Honey/dear/child/sunshine/Adichie, you can't get a new stance on a topic by experiencing something similar to your topic. For example, I dislike pears. I can't see the way a pear trees swings about in the wind and sunshine (in a flower filled meadow, of course) and have a epiphany where I suddenly realize my long-lost hunger for pears and their succulent juices. It just doesn't work that way.

Even if she had seen Mexican immigrants planting flowers as they went through customs, how is she to know which story is right? Given the fact that with two stories, there is usually one that holds more truth, why in the world would she go on to believe Mexican immigrants are nice people? I mean, come on! The newspapers all say they're horrible, horrible people who should all die a horrible, horrible death before they ever get the golden/magnificent/fantastic opportunity to set foot on American soil!

Hyberboles aside, Adichie fails to understand the simple concept of perceptive, though her speech gives the idea that she wrote the book on it. Yes, having a single story of a people is not wrong, but has a very high chance of being both faulty and incorrect. Like she states in another lengthy quote, perceptions derived from single stories often lead to little or no truth about a people whatsoever: "A student told me that it was such a shame that Nigerian men were physical abusers like the father [odd African name that sounds like "karate"] in my novel. I told him I had just read a book called American Psycho, and it was such a same that young Americans were serial murderers.... It would never have occurred to me to think that just because I had read a novel in which a character was a serial killer that he was somehow representative of all Americans [because] I did not have a single story of America."

So, then, what is right? Can a single story depict an entire people, including its struggles, triumphs, and other such plights? The answer is simple: of course not, you bumbling idiot.

A single story can depict only what it is: a single story. It cannot even fathom the amount of stories that it would need to be in order to fully tell the correct tale of a people. And for you single story fans out there, you all can shove it.

Here's a couple quotes that conveniently worked out to summarize my main point: "Stories matter. Many stories matter." "The consequence of the single story is this: it robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different, rather than how we are similar." "When we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise."

What? Connections to the novel and class discussions!?

In 1984, the people were given one point of view to believe and tattoo across their foreheads, which we all know is wrong, yet would still make for excellent tattooing. In the history book discussion, the broad spectrum of points-of-views were largely ignored, which we all know is also wrong, yet not quite as cool for tattooing. The point is that a single story is inept at telling history. A society cannot be built on a single story. A dictatorship can. Maybe even a lemonade stand. But not a free society.

The link to the video attacked/doted upon/explored in this lovely little post can be found by clicking Wilbert. "Who is Wilbert?" you may ask? Why, Wilbert that word beginning with a "n" at the end of this sentence. Nacamut.