The Danger of a Single Story

• "The danger of a single story" - foreshadows the main argument as she says that it is extremely harmful to only provide one narrative about a person/culture and creates a cautionary tone
• "I'm a storyteller" - personal pronoun at the start of the speech immediately engages reader and we know she is going to tell a few stories but juxtaposes with "the danger of a single story" - this reminds the reader that this should be taken seriously
• "few personal stories" - anecdotal and light-hearted tone
• "although I think that four is probably closer to the truth" - ethos/establishes credibility - makes her more likeable/ audience is more likely to listen to her
• "my poor mother was obliged to read" - pathos - humourous and makes her more likeable
• "they played in the snow, they ate apples" - listing - monotony/uninspiring as she did not write about characters that were similar to her and her African heritage
• juxtaposition and antithesis of listing of white characters and African characters - "we played in the snow" "we didn't have snow" - direct opposites and how little she could relate to the stories she was reading
• "how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story" - emotive language - tone is more serious. Collective pronoun to encourage a sense of unity with the audience
• "But because of writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye" - references of African authors and establishes credibility/ethos - she is well read so has the authority to write on this topic. Shift in tone.
• "Now I loved these American and British books I read" - complimentary and engages audience as she is not trying to blame them. Doesn't want to put off any members of the audience as she will have American and British people listening to her. "But the unintended consequence was that" - language choice to create an empathetic tone as she is appreciating the fact that it was unintentional
• "So what the discovery of African writers did for me was this: it saved me from having a single story of what books are" - use of the colon draws importance to the following clause - the conclusion. The word "save" also contrasts with the word "danger".
• "Finish your food! Don't you know? People like Fide's family have nothing" - use of dialogue is humourous - makes Adichie more likeable through her shared experience of the single story of Fide through the use of anecdotes. "Their poverty was my single story of them" - logos/criticises herself - audience is more likely to listen to her
• "Then one Saturday" - time expressions - she is a storyteller
• "tribal music" (expectation of what roommate thought her music would be) contrasts with her tape of "Mariah Carey" - reality - reference to popular culture - emphasises how little knowledge her roommate had of Adichie and Africa. "She assumed that I did not know how to use a stove" - short sentence = limited view of Africans being primitive
• "patronizing, well meaning pity" -language choice = empathetic tone as the roommate does not mean to harm Adichie. "my roommate had a single story of Africa: a single story of catastrophe" - parallel sentence structure. Africa synonymous with catastrophe - limited view
• "no possibility" - anaphora - limited view
• "I began to understand my roommate's response to me...I would see Africans in the same way that, I, as a child, had seen Fide's family" - logos - she has built her argument - firstly, with her own personal experiences, then how she had been guilty with stereotyping Fide's family to her personal experience of being stereotyped - difficult to appreciate difference if you are only exposed to one narrative
• "I too am guilty" - critiques herself - shared responsibility. "There were endless stories of Mexicans as people who were fleecing the healthcare system... that sort of thing" - dismissive tone suggests that she does not believe this now
• Adichie in Guadalajara - "watching the people going to work, rolling up tortillas in the marketplace, smoking, laughing" - listing highlights the wonderful things that she saw of the Mexicans - contrast to what she thought of them as "people who were fleecing the healthcare system". There is also a lack of conjunction = endless list
• "I had bought into the single story of Mexicans and I could not have been more ashamed of myself" - phrasal verb suggests choice and the power to accept/reject sterotypes/one narrative
• "So this is how to create a single story, show people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again" - repetition emphasises that this is a cultural issue that repeats itself - this is where the cautionary tone comes from
• "Stories have been used to dispossess and malign, but stories can be used to empower and to humanise" - juxtaposition/antithesis - stories can be powerful in a positive or negative way - stories should be used for good via the introduction of many narratives instead of to create a limited view and a single story
• Alice Walker introducing a book about the Southern life they had left behind - "a kind of paradise was regained" - links to conclusion "when we reject the single story, we gain a kind of paradise" - collective pronoun to connote shared responsibility - repetition of "paradise" contrasting to danger emphasising that stories can have positive impacts
• Plan