TED/Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story

Chimamanda is a novelist, and that means that she knows a lot about stories, no matter the long ones or short. However, stories coming from a person's mouth, rather than the mouths can be really misleading. And these tales don't usually represent the whole person, but there are more and more events showing that people are taking in the tales as the whole background of the teller, which is wrong.

Sometimes, we only get a few minutes to describe about ourselves, or tell a story to the rest of the audiences, but that piece of tale doesn't really cover up our personalities, or the environment we grew up, not even the person we really are. This is really unfair in many interviews and social life situations, for there are many times the interviewers and bosses will ask you to talk about yourself and cover it all in a few minutes, however, it doesn't really cover us, and people shouldn't judge it each other, or think that: well, I understand the guy and totally know him through the story he told.

That's what the novelist Chimamanda is here to tell us, never judge someone from what he said, or how he or she looks; it's impolite and totally unprofessional. And most of the time it's wrong. Sometimes by doing so, we're missing people who are really talented, just by ignoring the person because of his background, or maybe a fine piece of speech delivered. There are also many people who are eloquent and smooth on the tongues, but does that mean they are suitable for the job? Not exactly, so it's dangerous to just hear from a single story.