Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The danger of a single story.

Pre-listening.

1 - What do you know of Chimamanda ? Find some data about her  on the internet. Copy it.

   Do you know that life is made of stories? Sometimes , when I am in a big city where I can go unnoticed, I like sitting in cafés and watch people go by. Then I get stories out of their looks, the way they walk or how they speak. They are oversimplified stories. This old lady is going to collect her grandchildren from school, that young girl looks sad because she has had a row with her boyfriend. I like this experience of imagining stories for people. The problem is that by inventing a single story I am denying this old lady the possibility of being a writer, a lawyer, a teacher, or of going to meet her lover. Keeping somebody locked in a single story is depriving her complexity and thus of her humanity. It gets even worse when it happens to whole peoples or continents. What are the stories you have heard about Africa? See and hear how Chimamanda talks about it.

While-listening.  

2- Who was Fide? What was the single story her mum told her about him? What did she learn when she first met his family? 

3- What was the story her American flatmate was told about Africa? How was she surprised when she met Chimamanda?

4- Who was John Lock? What kind of tradition did he start?

5- What is the single story Americans learn about Mexicans?

6- Copy here the last sentence of her speech.What does it mean?

After- listening. 

7- In what way are power and stories connected? 

 8- She says: "the single stories create stereotypes". What is the problem with stereotypes? 

9 - Mourid Bargoughti is a Palestinian poet. He says: "If you want to dispossess a person you have to tell their story and start by secondly." What does it mean?Give examples.

10- "Stories matter. Many stories matter." Would it be a good summary? Why?