I’m a sto­ry­tel­ler. And I would like to tell you a few per­so­nal sto­ries about what I like to call “the dan­ger of the 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 close 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, at about the age of seven, sto­ries in pen­cil with cray­on il­lus­tra­ti­ons that my poor mo­ther was ob­li­ga­ted to read, I wrote ex­act­ly the kinds of sto­ries I was re­a­ding: All my cha­rac­ters were white and blue-​eyed, they play­ed in the snow, they ate ap­p­les, and they tal­ked a lot about the weather, how lo­ve­ly it was that the sun had come out.

Now, this de­spi­te the fact that I lived in Ni­ge­ria. I had 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.

My cha­rac­ters also drank a lot of gin­ger beer, be­cau­se the cha­rac­ters in the Bri­tish books I read drank gin­ger beer. Never mind that I had no idea what gin­ger beer was. And for many years af­ter­wards, I would have a de­spe­ra­te de­si­re to taste gin­ger beer. But that is ano­ther story.

What this de­mons­tra­tes, I think, is how im­pres­si­o­na­ble and vul­ne­r­a­ble we are in the face of a story, parti­cu­lar­ly as child­ren. Be­cau­se all I had read were books in which cha­rac­ters were for­eign, I had be­co­me con­vin­ced that books by their very na­tu­re had to have for­eig­ners in them and had to be about things with which I could not per­so­nal­ly iden­tify. Now, things chan­ged 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.

But be­cau­se of wri­ters like Chi­nua Ache­be and Ca­ma­ra Laye, 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 things I re­cognis­ed.

Now, 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. So what the dis­co­very of Afri­can wri­ters did for me was this: It saved me from ha­ving a sin­gle story of what books are.

I come 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 house boy. His name was Fide. The only thing my mo­ther told us 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.

Then one Sa­tur­day, we went to his vil­la­ge to visit, and his mo­ther showed us a beau­ti­ful­ly pat­ter­ned bas­ket made of dyed raf­fia that his brot­her had made. I was start­led. It had not oc­cur­red to me that an­y­bo­dy in his fa­mi­ly could ac­tu­al­ly make so­me­thing. All I had 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.

Years later, I thought about this when I left Ni­ge­ria to go to uni­ver­si­ty in the United Sta­tes. I was ni­ne­teen. My Ame­ri­can room­ma­te was sho­cked by me. She asked where I had lear­ned 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. Her de­fault po­si­ti­on to­ward me, as an Afri­can, was a kind of pa­tro­nis­ing, well-​meaning pity. My room­ma­te had a sin­gle story of Afri­ca: a sin­gle story of ca­ta­stro­phe. In this sin­gle story, there was no pos­si­bi­li­ty of Afri­cans being si­mi­lar to her in any way, no pos­si­bi­li­ty of fee­lings more com­plex than pity, no pos­si­bi­li­ty of a con­nec­tion as human equals.



I must say that be­fo­re I went to the US, I didn’t con­scious­ly iden­tify as Afri­can. But in the US, whe­ne­ver Afri­ca came up, people tur­ned to me. Never mind that I knew nothing about places like Na­mi­bia. But I did come to em­brace this new iden­ti­ty, and in many ways I think of mys­elf now as Afri­can. Alt­hough I still get quite ir­ri­ta­ble when Afri­ca is re­fer­red to as a coun­try, the most re­cent ex­amp­le being my other­wi­se won­der­ful flight from Lagos two days ago, in which there was an an­nounce­ment on the Vir­gin flight about the cha­ri­ty work in “India, Afri­ca and other coun­t­ries.”

So, after I had 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, un­a­ble 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 Fide’s fa­mi­ly.

This sin­gle story of Afri­ca ul­ti­ma­te­ly comes, I think, from Wes­tern li­te­ra­tu­re. Now, here is a quote from the wri­ting of a Lon­don mer­chant cal­led John Lok, who sailed to West Afri­ca in 1561 and kept a fa­sci­na­ting ac­count of his voya­ge. After re­fer­ring to the black Afri­cans as “be­asts who have no houses,” he wri­tes, “They are also people wit­hout heads, ha­ving their mouths and eyes in their breasts.”

Now, I’ve laug­hed every time I’ve read this. And one must ad­mi­re the ima­gi­na­ti­on of John Lok. But what is im­portant about his wri­ting is that it re­pres­ents the be­gin­ning of a tra­di­ti­on of tel­ling Afri­can sto­ries in the West: A tra­di­ti­on of Sub-​Saharan Afri­ca as a place of ne­ga­ti­ves, of dif­fe­rence, of dark­ness, of people who, in the words of the won­der­ful poet Ru­dyard Ki­pling, are “half devil, half child.”

And so, I began to re­a­li­se that my Ame­ri­can room­ma­te must have, th­roug­hout her life, seen and heard dif­fe­rent ver­si­ons of this sin­gle story, as had a pro­fes­sor, who once told me that my novel was not “au­then­ti­cal­ly Afri­can.” Now, I was quite wil­ling to con­tend that there were a num­ber of things wrong with the novel, that it had failed in a num­ber of places, but I had not quite ima­gi­ned that it had failed at achie­ving so­me­thing cal­led “Afri­can au­then­ti­ci­ty”. In fact, I did not know what Afri­can au­then­ti­ci­ty was. The pro­fes­sor told me that my cha­rac­ters were too much like him, an edu­ca­ted and middle-​class man. My cha­rac­ters drove cars. They were not star­ving. The­re­fo­re they were not au­then­ti­cal­ly Afri­can.

But I must quick­ly add that I too am just as guil­ty in the ques­ti­on of the 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 as people who were flee­cing the heal­th­ca­re sys­tem, sne­a­king across the bor­der, being ar­res­ted at the bor­der, that sort of thing.

I re­mem­ber wal­king around on my first day in Gu­a­da­la­ja­ra, wat­ching the people going to work, rol­ling up tor­til­las in the mar­ket­place, smo­king, laug­hing. I re­mem­ber first fee­ling slight sur­pri­se. And then, I was over­whel­med with shame. I re­a­li­sed that I had 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 story of Me­xi­cans and I could not have been more as­ha­med of mys­elf.

So that is how to crea­te a sin­gle story: Show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they be­co­me.

It is im­pos­si­ble to talk about the sin­gle story wit­hout tal­king about power. There is a word, an Igbo word, that I think about whe­ne­ver I think about the power struc­tures of the world, and it is “nkali.” It’s a noun that loo­se­ly trans­la­tes to “to be gre­a­ter than ano­ther.” Like our eco­no­mic and po­li­ti­cal worlds, sto­ries too are de­fi­ned by the prin­ciple of nkali: How they are told, who tells them, when they’re told, 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. The Pa­lesti­ni­an poet Mou­rid Barg­hou­ti wri­tes that if you want to dis­pos­sess a people, the simp­lest way to do it is to tell their story and to start 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.

I re­cent­ly spoke at a uni­ver­si­ty where a stu­dent told me that it was such a shame that Ni­ge­ri­an men were phy­si­cal ab­u­sers like the father cha­rac­ter in my novel. I told him that I had just read a novel cal­led “Ame­ri­can Psy­cho” – and that it was such a shame that young Ame­ri­cans were se­ri­al mur­de­rers.

Now, ob­vious­ly I said this in a fit of mild ir­ri­ta­ti­on.

But it would never have oc­cur­red to me to think that just be­cau­se I had read a novel in which a cha­rac­ter was a se­ri­al kil­ler that he was so­mehow re­pre­sen­ta­ti­ve of all Ame­ri­cans. And now, this is not be­cau­se I am a bet­ter per­son than that stu­dent, but be­cau­se of Ame­ri­ca’s cul­tu­ral and eco­no­mic power, I had many sto­ries of Ame­ri­ca. I had read Tyler and Up­di­ke and Stein­beck and Gaits­kill. I did not have a sin­gle story of Ame­ri­ca.

When I lear­ned, some years ago, that wri­ters were ex­pec­ted to have had re­al­ly un­hap­py childhoods to be suc­cess­ful, I began to think about how I could in­vent hor­ri­ble things my pa­rents had done to me.

But the truth is that I had a very happy childhood, full of laugh­ter and love, in a very close-​knit fa­mi­ly.

But I also had grand­fathers who died in re­fu­gee camps. My cou­sin Polle died be­cau­se he could not get ade­qua­te heal­th­ca­re. One of my clo­sest fri­ends, Oko­lo­ma, died in a plane crash be­cau­se our fire trucks did not have water. I grew up under re­pres­si­ve mi­li­ta­ry go­vern­ments that deva­lu­ed edu­ca­ti­on, so that so­me­times, my pa­rents were not paid their sala­ries. And so, as a child, I saw jam di­sap­pear from the break­fast table. Then mar­ga­ri­ne di­sap­peared, then bread be­ca­me too ex­pen­si­ve, then milk be­ca­me ra­ti­o­ned. And most of all, a kind of nor­ma­li­sed po­li­ti­cal fear in­va­ded our lives.

All of these sto­ries make me who I am. But to in­sist on only these ne­ga­ti­ve sto­ries is to flat­ten my ex­pe­ri­ence and to over­look the many other sto­ries that for­med me. The sin­gle story crea­tes ste­reo­ty­pes, and the pro­blem with ste­reo­ty­pes is not that they are un­true, but that they are in­com­ple­te. They make one story be­co­me the only story.

Of cour­se, Afri­ca is a con­ti­nent full of ca­ta­stro­phes: the im­mense ones, such as the hor­ri­fic rapes in Congo and de­pres­sing ones, such as the fact that five thousand people apply for one job va­can­cy in Ni­ge­ria. But there are other sto­ries that are not about ca­ta­stro­phe, and it is very im­portant, it is just as im­portant, to talk about them.











































Text­quel­le: TED­Glo­abl 2009 / TED Talk by Chi­ma­man­da Ngozi Adi­chie