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.
It has been over fifteen years since Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie stepped onto the TED stage in Oxford, England. She was relatively young then, wearing a vibrant yellow top and sporting a confident, understated smile. She didn't use slides. She didn't use props. She just talked. That Ted Talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, titled "The Danger of a Single Story," has since become one of the most-watched presentations in the platform's history, racking up tens of millions of views. But why does a talk from 2009 feel even more urgent in 2026?
Maybe because we’re still falling into the same traps.
Basically, Adichie’s core argument is that if we only hear one version of a person, a country, or a culture, we risk a massive misunderstanding. We create a "single story" that robs people of their dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar.
The Childhood Roots of a Narrow Worldview
Adichie starts with her own life in Nigeria. She was a precocious child, reading British and American children’s books. Because of this, she began to write stories where characters drank ginger beer and talked about the weather, despite the fact that she lived in Nigeria, ate mangoes, and never talked about the weather because there was no need to.
She had become a victim of a single story of literature.
She didn't think people like her—people with skin the color of chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form ponytails—could exist in books. This is a subtle kind of brainwashing. It’s what happens when the "official" narrative of what is important or "literary" comes from only one place. She calls this a "mental vulnerability" to stories. It’s scary how easily a child’s imagination can be colonized by foreign tales.
Then she flips the script.
She tells us about Fide. Fide was a boy who worked in her household. All her mother told her about Fide was that his family was very poor. She felt enormous pity for them. But when she visited his village, his brother showed her a beautiful patterned basket made of dyed raffia. She was startled. She hadn't thought it possible that someone in his family could actually make something. Her single story of Fide was "poverty," and that story precluded her from seeing him as a complex, creative human being.
When Africa Becomes a Single Story of Catastrophe
The most famous part of this Ted Talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie involves her arrival in the United States at age 19. Her American roommate was shocked. The roommate had a "default position" of patronizing, well-meaning pity toward Adichie.
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The roommate asked where she had learned to speak English so well and was confused when Adichie said Nigeria happened to have English as its official language. She asked to hear Adichie's "tribal music" and was disappointed when Adichie pulled out a tape of Mariah Carey.
What the roommate was seeing wasn't Adichie; she was seeing a pre-packaged version of Africa.
This version is what Adichie calls the "single story of Africa." It's a place of beautiful landscapes, animals, and "senseless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS, unable to speak for themselves and waiting to be saved by a kind, white foreigner."
Honestly, it’s a narrative that hasn't fully gone away. We see it in charity commercials. We see it in news snippets that only highlight conflict. If you only see a place through the lens of catastrophe, you lose the ability to see the middle class, the tech hubs in Lagos, the fashion industry in Senegal, or the literature coming out of Nairobi. You just see a "problem."
The Power Dynamics of Storytelling (Nkali)
Adichie introduces an Igbo word: nkali.
It’s a noun that roughly translates to "to be greater than another." Storytelling is intimately tied to power. How stories are told, who tells them, when they are told, and how many stories are told, are really dependent on power.
Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person.
If you want to dispossess a people, the simplest way is to tell their story starting with "secondly." Start the story with the arrows of the Native Americans, and not with the arrival of the British, and you have an entirely different story. Start the story with the failure of the African state, and not with the colonial creation of the African state, and you have an entirely different story.
This isn't just academic. It’s how policy is made. It’s how borders are policed. It’s how we decide who is "relatable" and who is "other."
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The Problem With Stereotypes
It’s not that stereotypes are necessarily false. That’s the nuance people often miss. Adichie is clear: "The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete."
They make one story become the only story.
When she traveled to Mexico from the U.S., she was surprised to see people working, laughing, and rolling up tortillas. Because of the political climate in the U.S. at the time, she had bought into a single story of the "abject immigrant." She realized she had done to the Mexicans exactly what her roommate had done to her. Even a brilliant novelist can get caught in the trap of a single story.
It takes a conscious effort to seek out the "other" stories.
Why We Still Get It Wrong in the Digital Age
You’d think with the internet, we’d have thousands of stories at our fingertips. We do. But the algorithms often feed us more of the same.
We live in echo chambers.
If you follow a specific political thread, you get a single story of the "opposition." They become caricatures. They are "the woke" or "the bigots." We lose the personhood behind the label. Adichie’s talk is a warning against the comfort of the simple narrative. It’s easy to believe a single story. It’s efficient. It saves us the hard work of actually getting to know the messy, contradictory reality of another human being.
But efficiency is the enemy of empathy.
Complexity is the Antidote
To truly understand a place like Nigeria—or any place—you have to look at the failures and the successes.
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Adichie mentions the "terrible" things: the repressive governments, the crumbling infrastructure, the censorship. But she also mentions the "other" stories: the people who refuse to be silenced, the family traditions, the ambition of the youth.
A single story creates a "flat" character. It makes it impossible to see someone as an equal.
If you see someone as only a victim, you can't see them as a partner. If you see them as only a villain, you can't see their capacity for change. The Ted Talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie isn't just about literature; it’s a manual for how to live in a globalized world without being a jerk.
Actionable Steps to Diversify Your Narrative
It is one thing to watch a video and feel inspired. It is another to actually change how you consume the world. If you want to break the cycle of the single story, you have to be intentional about it.
- Audit your media diet. Look at your bookshelf, your Netflix queue, and your social media follows. If everyone looks like you, thinks like you, or comes from the same geographic region, you are living in a single story.
- Look for "Translated" experiences. Read literature in translation. Don't just read American authors writing about Japan; read Japanese authors writing about Japan. There is a texture and a "shorthand" in local storytelling that outsiders often miss or misinterpret.
- Start with "And." When you hear a headline about a country or a group of people, acknowledge the headline and then ask, "And what else is true?" If the story is about war, ask what the artists in that country are doing. If the story is about wealth, ask what the working class is experiencing.
- Question the "Beginning." Remember the concept of nkali. Ask yourself: where did this story start? If you change the starting point, does the "villain" become a "victim," or does the "hero" become an "oppressor"?
- Support diverse creators directly. Platforms like Substack, independent bookstores, and international film festivals are great for finding voices that aren't filtered through major Western media conglomerates.
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. We move from a flat, black-and-white world into a high-definition, complicated, beautiful reality. Adichie’s talk was a call to arms for the imagination. It’s time we finally answered it.
Seek out the other stories. They are waiting for you.
Next Steps for Deepening Perspective:
To move beyond the single story, begin by exploring Adichie’s fictional works like Half of a Yellow Sun or Americanah, which provide the "many stories" of the Nigerian experience she advocates for. Additionally, utilize resources like the Global Voices project or Words Without Borders to find grassroots reporting and literature from regions often misrepresented in mainstream media._