This TED Talk was very interesting to me. As Chimamanda tells about her life it was amazing to see all of the various cultures she had been exposed to throughout her life. I think that her definition of a single story relies heavily on stereotypes. When she explained how she would draw and make stories about the children with blue eyes who ate apples and spoke about the weather, that really showed how impressionable children are, even to stereotypes. I believe that this is very important to understand as a future teacher. That we should not be teaching single stories, but rather teaching all of the different perspectives on different topics. There is one single story that I think I am guilty of holding onto, and that is the single story about children with disabilities. I am also taking EDU 250 and EDU 251, which is a class about children with disabilities or children that are exceptional learners. My whole life I never really thought about the wide spectrums associated with all the different disabilities. I had believed that if you had autism, well then you had autism. I was unaware of how many different forms and levels of autism there is, this goes for different types of disabilities as well. I am very happy to be taking this class, so that way I can see many different “stories” when it comes to the children I will be working with. I believe that we are all culprits of falling into the habit of having a single story for different aspects of the world, but if we take the time and educate ourselves then there will be many more stories to tell and a world with more stories is a great one in my eyes.
Yes, absolutely. We do need to educate ourselves, and I love how literature can help us do that. As Adichie says too, it's about stereotypes and power relationships. Who gets to tell the story and why does the story get narrowed in the first place.
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