 Hello and welcome to a summary of what you need to know about Chimamanda and Gozidi's speech, The Danger of a Single Story, which was delivered at a TED conference in London, Houston. My name is Barbara and in this video I will read and explain in depth this version of the speech as it appears in the Edexcel Pearson International GCSE anthology and as I'm reading through it I will explain the meaning related to this text, the language techniques that you need to be aware of, as well as analyzing contextual factors that you will find helpful as you study this text. So let's get started. Now what I'll do is initially I will read through different paragraphs and then afterwards I'll explain language techniques. So let's get started by reading the first four paragraphs of her speech. I'm a storyteller and I would like to tell you a few personal stories about what I like to call The Danger of a Single Story. I grew up on a university campus in eastern Nigeria. My mother says that I started reading at the age of two, although I think four is probably closer to the truth. So I was an early reader and what I read were British and American children's books. I was also an early writer and when I began to write about age of seven, stories in pencil with crayon illustrations that my poor mother was obligated to read, I wrote exactly the kind of stories I was reading. All my characters were white and blue-eyed, they played in the snow, they ate apples and they talked about the weather. How lovely it was that the sun had come out. Now this despite the fact that I lived in Nigeria, I'd 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. What this demonstrates I think is how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story particularly as children because all I read were books in which characters were foreign. I'd become convinced that books by their very nature had to have foreigners in them and had to be about things which I could not personally identify. Now things change when I discovered African books. There weren't many of them available and they weren't quite as easy to find as the foreign books. Now before we proceed of course it's really interesting to bear in mind that Jomamandan Gozidiche is a highly successful novelist from Nigeria and one of her most famous books is Half of a Yellow Sun. Now of course she refers to this when she highlights as we can see here at the beginning I Am a Story's Teller and what this simple sentence does is it really focuses in on her journey in particular and of course her background as a prolific writer and it really foregrounds exactly what she's going to talk to us about and what influences her writing. She then moves on to really include us through direct address and she uses the pronoun you to really make us feel that we're included in her own anecdotes and she mentions this adjective personal and what this does is it really places us in her confidence. Also essentially she uses and she repeats the idea of a single story and this sibilance is really really powerful because it really functions as a refrain. It's a really powerful rhetorical technique. Now she goes on to use this declarative sentence. I grew up on a university campus in eastern Nigeria and what this does is it really now gives us a strong idea of her background. She then uses intensifiers so in this first paragraph to really add and inject a conversational tone we feel like we're being really taken along almost as if we're her friends. She then talks about books which were British and American and the proper nouns that she uses here the naming words British and American really shows that she had a very westernised background in spite of living in eastern Nigeria so of course what this shows is perhaps some people already had the misconception that eastern Nigeria was really far-flung but actually what she's showing is her background was quite akin to a lot of people who lived in the West. She then also repeats the idea of being a writer and of course this shows and foregrounds just how important writing and storytelling really is for her. She then uses the adjective my poor to describe her mother and this of course adds a sense of humour. She shows just how normal she was as a child but of course also how she started practicing really early but forcing her mom to literally sit to listen to her stories. She then also talks about how a lot of her writing, her early writing as a child was inspired by what she read in these British and American stories and there's an element of sadness that what she kind of looked up to didn't really represent what she was because as you know, Mimanda Ngozi-Disha, she's Nigerian, she is African in appearance, she does not have blue-eyed eyes and of course she never plays in the snow so all of these reference to European aesthetics and European Western ideals really shows just how detached and how different her writing, the writing that she read was to her lived reality. She then obviously reinforces that she lived in Nigeria and of course when she mentions the idea of the snow this adds a sense of humour so there's also a lightness to it despite the message of this speech being far more deeper. She then has the repetition of the first person pronouns we and this essentially shows how all-encompassing kind of her idea of living in Nigeria was and how different it was to live the reality that's been portrayed in British and American novels. She then also talks about how impressionable and vulnerable we tend to be when it comes to storytelling and of course these adjectives show how a story can really victimise a whole group of people in a continent such as Africa. Also the constant and repetitive reference back to the abstract noun story shows just how powerful, even if it's just an abstract noun, how powerful the idea of a story and the elements of a story can be in shaping how we see ourselves. She then has a Volta in this speech and Volta means a turning point and of course her turning point and perhaps what really inspired her trajectory to become a writer is when she discovered African books. So let's carry on. But because writers like Chinua Chebe, Kamara Lai, I went through a mental shift in my perception of literature. I realised that people like me, girls with skin the colour of chocolate whose kinky hair could not form ponytails could also exist in literature. I started to write about the things I recognise and as I mentioned that was a turning point that was a Volta because she first then elaborates hair by using the conjunction but and then again using these proper nouns to refer to African authors and of course Chinua Chebe is a really, really well known and very famous African author as is Kamara Lai and she's showing how this their storytelling technique, still the powerful story has had such a huge impact on her feeling like she could also be included as an African girl in these stories. She then reinforces this by mentioning girls with skin the colour of chocolate and of course colour of chocolate is a litteration. This really emphasises how she saw herself and the self perception that she had being a young girl in Africa. Also her identity is of course tied to her hair texture which is very, very different to the European aesthetic and of course the pre-modifier in other words the adjective kinky shows that she had a really hyper aware sense of identity and how she looked but also how different it was to the characters that she read in her books. Carrying on to the next paragraph. Now I love those American British books I read. They stood 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. So what the story of African writers did for me was this. It saved me from having the single story of what books are. I came from a conventional middle-class Nigerian family. My father was a professor. My mother was an administrator and so we had as was the norm live in domestic help who would often come from nearby rural villages. So the year I turned eight we got a new houseboy. His name was Fide. The only thing my mother told 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. So now obviously as this is developing we're really really getting an insight into her background. Now it's really interesting this declarative sentence. I love those American and British books I read because what this declarative sentence shows is that she's actually three dimensional. She doesn't only want to read African literature or only American and British books. This shows that just like Western people she also enjoyed a lot of the American and British books that she read. And of course what this is doing is demystifying what a lot of people maybe have in terms of the preconceptions of what African people can read and enjoy. She also uses this personification to again show and personify the stories that she's read again. This is showing the power of a story and she then uses the hyperbole that a story can really open up new worlds for her. It shows just how powerful story is to the imagination but also ultimately to our identity. However, also learning about these different African authors saved her and of course this especially the verb saved has the connotations of heroic activity and of course the heroes here are Chinua Chibi and writers like Kamara Lai. She then also mentions her middle class upbringing as I've mentioned before. She really now starts giving us more glimpses into her own background. So she came from a really really middle class background and she shows us this through the use of these two simple sentences that focus our attention in on her father first and then her mother. She then mentions houseboy. So somebody who works for their family inside the house and he was called Fidei. And it's interesting because actually what she does by especially giving him a name really humanizes him. She then uses domestic provincial common nouns. So the idea of yams and rice and again this kind of shows just how provincial Fidei's background is and also just how simple and modest his background is for the fact that his mother or rather Chimamanda and Gozidi Chieh's mother used to send them these really provincial goods showing just an emphasize and just how poor they are. And then this further emphasis is really driven home through this imperative sentence. This is what the mother used to tell them and bear in mind that an imperative sentence is a sentence that issues a command. So the mother used to tell Chimamanda and Gozidi Chieh to really finish her food. She had to finish her food. Otherwise, you know, she'd be she would be taking for granted the fact that she wasn't starving much like Fidei's family was. So let's carry on. Then one Saturday went his village to visit and his mother showed us a beautifully patterned basket of dyed raffia that his brother had made. I was startled. It did not occur to me that anybody in his family could actually make something. All I heard about them was how poor they were so that it had become impossible for me to see them as anything else but poor. Their poverty was my single story of them. So it's really interesting that when she now goes to Fidei's village, she mentions really interesting pre-modifying adjectives relating to African material, beautifully patterned, dyed raffia. And of course, this is showing that she's really shocked that these people have skills. Again, this is a bit surprising for us because of course, what this makes us realise is sometimes we really dehumanise other people without even realising it ourselves. Also, the adverb actually emphasises just how narrow-minded she later realised her view was of Fidei. And of course, the repetition of poor also emphasises just how she only saw Fidei through this very, very narrow lens when he was far more complex than that. And then there's again this refrain single story and this repetition again of sibilant sounds is a really powerful rhetorical device. And this is again foregrounding everything in this build up to how she herself is going to be stereotyped much like Fidei was stereotyped. She carries on. Years later, I thought about this when I left Nigeria to go to university in the United States. I was 19. My American roommate was shocked by me. She asked where I'd learnt to speak English so well and was confused when I said that Nigeria happened to have English as its official language. She asked if she could listen to what she called my tribal music and was consequently very disappointed when I produced my tape of Mariah Carey. She assumed that I did not know how to use a stove. What struck me was this. She had felt sorry for me even before she saw me. A default position towards me as an African was kind of patronising while meaning P.T. My roommate had a single story of Africa, a single story of catastrophe. In the single story there was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way. No possibility of feelings more complex than P.T. No possibility of a connection as human equals. Now what she does is that she has this temporal shift forward. She starts by using the term years later and now we start seeing things come to full circle for her. Then this simple sentence I was 19 really shows the seminal moment years forward which now starts realising the power of a story but also the power of seeing people through this really really narrow lens and how humiliating it can feel. Of course she refers to her American roommate and now she uses this series of pronouns, third person pronouns to talk about her roommate and what this does actually is it really distances her from her roommate. That's the effect of this third person pronoun and this emphasises the alienation that Chimamanda Ngozi Tche felt when she was in America and of course this was even more pronounced through how differently her American roommate saw her. She then of course uses the adjective tribal to refer to this kind of racist question that her roommate asked assuming that Chimamanda Ngozi Tche must come from a very backward place and of course there's a touch of humour here when Chimamanda Ngozi Tche replies by the fact that she listens to Mariah Carey and this proper noun is a pop cultural icon reference and of course the space makers really laugh because this completely flies in the face of what her roommate assumed about Africa. They're not playing bongo drums, they're not doing all the things that are really racistly stereotyped about Africans actually they listen to exactly the same stuff as American people do. She then also talks about that her roommate felt sorry for her even before she saw her and of course this mirrors how Aditya herself saw their house boy Fidei so of course there's a bit of an irony to this and the adjectives patronising while meaning to describe the abstract noun pity shows the damaging stereotypes that a lot of people in the West have towards Africa even if they feel really sorry for Africa actually it's not necessarily meant to empower Africans. Again there's this refrain the mention of a single story which is repeated again it's almost like a verse going back to the chorus and this shows the power of a story and of course also the repetition of no possibility no possibility no possibility three times really shows the negatives and it emphasises the hopelessness that people assume Africa encompasses and encapsulates. Also the mention of human equals really shows the racist underpinnings that undergird how people and many people in the West see Africa it's a bread basket it's a place for handouts hence African people also a people who are supposed to be given something they are handed out because they're not equal to Europeans or to Americans which of course she is uncovering as a lot of nonsense. Carrying on so after I spent some years in the US as an African I began to understand my roommate's response to me. If I had not grown up in Nigeria and if all I knew about Africa were from popular images I too would think that Africa was a place of beautiful landscapes beautiful animals and incomprehensible people fighting senseless wars dying of poverty and AIDS and able to speak for themselves and waiting to be saved by a kind white foreigner. I would see Africans in the same way that I as a child had seen Fidei's family. Of course what she says here is really interesting. So firstly the noun in African is interesting and it's a contrast to how she referred to herself initially at the beginning of this speech so initially she talks about growing up in Nigeria feeling this sense of being Nigerian but what this noun does is it shows that her time in America is really broadened identity from simply being Nigerian to actually being more pan-African. Also the alliteration roommate's response really emphasizes the power and the reverberating effect that how her roommate treated still it still stays with Aditya even to this day. Also the reference to popular images shows how Western media is guilty of this perception of Africa being this poor place which is totally hopeless and her reference to beautiful landscapes beautiful images this stereotype of safaris and war shows again how the western media have been really really key in pushing forward this really negative stereotyped idea of Africa which is just one side of it whilst on the other hand it's really really multifaceted. Furthermore the pre-modifying adjectives kind white to describe the foreigner refers to the saviour complex that a lot of people talk about when they talk about Africa this idea of people who are western feeling like they're almost Jesus figures as they go to Africa to build a well or to do something which is well-meaning but doesn't really have an impact on the people that live there locally and also it tends to be done out of ignorance doesn't really benefit the Africans. Carrying on to the next paragraph but I must quickly add that I too am just as guilty in the question of a single story. A few years ago I visited Mexico from the US the political climate in the US at the time was tense and there were debates going on about immigration and as often happens in America immigration became synonymous with Mexicans. There were endless stories of Mexicans of people who are fleecing the healthcare system sneaking across the border being arrested the border that sort of thing. I remember walking around on my first day in Guadalajara watching the people going to work rolling up to tears in the marketplace smoking laughing. I remember first feeling slight surprise and then I was overwhelmed with shame. I realized that I'd 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 stories of Mexicans and I could not have been more ashamed of myself. So again much like she had this narrow-minded view of Fidei again she implicates herself once more with how she saw Mexicans. So just like the way Americans have never left America and have never seen Africa have this very narrow-minded view she also suffered the same perception of Mexicans. She'd never left America once she went there as a student and consequently had this very narrow view of other Mexicans. Now the abstract noun guilty of course shows her culpability. She realizes she herself is guilty. It's not it doesn't go just one way. This ignorance she herself has also been quite ignorant in the past and of course her reference to the proper nouns Mexico and US references the political tensions that these two countries tended to have. Also the repetition of the proper nouns Mexicans as a group really dehumanizes them. It shows just how from her perspective she just saw them at one point as just a mass of people that were all the same and of course ironically this is exactly how her roommates saw her as an quote-unquote African. Also this colloquialism and bear in mind a colloquialism is a informal way of speaking. It's not necessarily slang but it's more informal. Now what this colloquialism does is of course it shows and it echoes just how colloquially she would maybe reference Mexicans, how she would just accept conventional views during the time which were very anti-Mexican and of course she's very ashamed of it. It's also interesting that she uses the proper noun and a real reference to a specific location in Mexico. So this is Jaggen, Guadalajara unless you're very familiar with Mexico you don't necessarily know about this city. So of course what this does is it also lends her credibility because it shows that her viewpoints changed not because she went to a library and read lots on Mexico but she actually went to the country visited it, went to a specific location. Of course she became really embarrassed at how narrow-minded she was towards Mexicans and of course the siblings slight surprise again shows that she is really really shocked and probably much like her roommate was really shocked to learn about the fact that she didn't necessarily come from a background country just because she was African again she also was really surprised to realize that Mexicans are far more three-dimensional than how they are portrayed and of course again she repeats the media coverage she implicates the western media in these terrible stereotypes that they put forward of a group and a nation of people. Also her reference to the abject immigrant again this is really dehumanizing, it classifies in some ways all Mexicans as just pests so this obviously shows that she's just extremely embarrassed and the comparative adjective more ashamed shows just how she realizes just how guilty she was of her own viewpoints and her own stereotypes of Mexicans and she wanted to change that. So then she carries on so that is how to create a single story show people as one thing and only one thing over and over again and that is what they become. Stories matter many stories matter stories have been used to dispossess to malign but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize stories can break the dignity of the people but stories can also repair that broken dignity. The American writer Alice Walker wrote about this, wrote this about her southern relatives who had moved to the north. She introduced them to a book about the southern life that they had left behind. They sat around reading the book themselves listening to me read the book and a kind of paradox was regained. I would like to end with this thought that when we reject the single story when we realize there's never a single story about any place we regain a kind of paradise. So of course this ending is really really powerful. Now it's really interesting here that she repeats the idea of one thing and what this repetition does is emphasize how repetitive and tedious the narrative surrounding Africa is. This idea of Africa being this place that's war-torn, this place that's riddled with AIDS, this place that's only safaris is just very tired as a narrative and it needs to change. Also this simple sentence stories matter shows just how powerful and how formative stories can be when it comes to understanding ourselves and also understanding our identities and of course stories have been really transformative for Chimama Nagose Dice because that's what her career is based on. Also she uses terms relating to power and again this lends the power of story even more force because it shows how stories can really change how we see ourselves. Also her reference to proper noun Alice Walker. So of course Alice Walker is a really really famous African American novelist. She wrote The Colour Purple amongst other novels. Now what this does is of course it shows just how much like other minority groups of course Chimama Nagose Dice in America was a minority group being an African. Now she references an African American who perhaps also when it comes to popular culture African Americans have had sometimes to suffer from a single story about them so she references this by way of Alice Walker. Also the fact that she uses direct speech to reference what Alice Walker says herself shows the global and timeless impact of a narrative. If a narrative is negative irrespective of where your culture is from in Alice Walker's case she probably had to grow up digesting stories which had a very negative narrative around African Americans but of course Chimama Nagose Dice faced the same narrative when it came to being African. All of this sadness that goes with that kind of negativity really impacts people and of course that's why she also references Alice Walker. It cuts across cultures. Of course she does end with a really really positive note. She uses the metaphor. We regain the kind of paradise as a way of showing just how enlightening it can be when we start learning a more three dimensional way of seeing the world and three dimensional way of seeing different types of people and of course it's really important to pay attention to what we consume when it comes to mass media. So that's all. I hope you found this video useful and thank you so much for listening and make sure you visit our website which is www.firstreadtutors.com here you will find lots of revision and study material relating to this extract but indeed also other areas of English. Thank you so much for listening.