Danger of a single story - thoughs and feelings about upbrining

Question 1

‘all my characters were white and blue-eyed’ (8)

Answer 1

The diction of ‘white’ and ‘blue-eyed’ draws an implicit contrast that captures the gulf between Adichie’s childhood surroundings and the characters in her books.

Question 2

‘I loved those American and British books I read. They stirred my imagination. They opened up new worlds for me. But the unintended consequence was that I did not know that people like me could exist in literature.’ (24-26)

Answer 2

Adichie’s metaphors (‘stirred my imagination’, ‘opened up new worlds’) communicate the liberating power of fiction. She caveats this revelation by acknowledging that because she was only exposed to these narratives, they became limiting for her.

Question 3

‘Their poverty was my single story of them.’ (41)

Answer 3

The phrase ‘single story’ functions as a metaphor for stereotyping others and is repeated throughout the extract in different contexts for emphasis. Here, she is admitting to having stereotyped poor Nigerians in a nearby rural village.

Question 4

‘If I had not grown up in Nigeria […] I, too, would think Africa was a place of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals…senseless wars…poverty and AIDS’. (57)

Answer 4

Adichie’s repetition of ‘if’ creates a hypothetical scenario to show that she too would believe a single narrative about Africa if she was fed the same media story about the continent as her roommate. She lists the contrasting depictions of Africa in the news: a place of ‘beautiful landscapes’ but also ‘senseless wars’ to show how all nuance is sucked from a place in the promotion of a single story.

Question 5

‘I remember first feeling slight surprise. And then, I was overwhelmed with shame.’ (68-69)

Answer 5

Here, Adichie uses emotive diction in her admission that she was ‘overwhelmed with shame’ when she realised she had typecast Mexicans in the same way she too had been typecast by her roommate.