Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warns listeners about a common habit: reducing people or places to one repeated narrative. She calls this habit “the single story.” A single story narrows human life down to one angle and then shuts out curiosity, nuance and empathy. Adichie argues danger grows when one narrative becomes the default point of view. People start to expect one script, then judge anyone who does not match. People’s dignity suffers because full lives are reduced into symbols. Fear and pity take the place of attention. She shares several examples of “the single story”. As a child in Nigeria, Adichie read many British and American books, then wrote stories filled with snow, blue eyes, and foreign food. Adichie learned one story about her family’s houseboy, Fide, focused on poverty. A visit to his village revealed skill and creativity including a woven basket. In college, a roommate assumed Africa meant disaster and assumed Adichie lacked English. A professor dismissed her novel as “not African” because characters lived middle class lives. Adichie also admits a single story about Mexicans shaped by U.S. media, then a visit to Guadalajara showed ordinary life and sparked shame. The concept of “single story” is connected to stereotypes because if something is repeated it seems true. “Single story” also links to power as groups that control publishing, news, and education determine which stories is told and which ones get ignored. I have been faced with “single story” thinking in some everyday conversations. Being of African origin I have been asked countless of times questions that do not make sense to me; like, do people keep lions as pets back in Africa? Another one is that on hot summer days when I complain about the heat, coworkers would tell me that I should not complain since I am from Africa, as if Africa has one climate and as if my experience with weather should go according to some stereotype. Comments like these demonstrate the substitution of one simple picture for actual knowledge, when many parts of Africa are cooler than parts of the United States, and heat is experienced differently depending on the place and the time of year. Adichie’s talk is effective because it remains personal and specific. It pushed me to look for multiple sources, listen actively and treat people as whole.