Adichie introduces herself as a passionate reader and storyteller who grew up in Nigeria.

As a child, Adichie reads exclusively British and American children's literature.

Adichie begins writing her own stories as a child, modeling them entirely on Western books with white characters.

Adichie discovers African writers Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye and experiences a profound mental shift about literature.

Adichie's mother repeatedly reminds her not to waste food, invoking Fide's family as a symbol of poverty.

Adichie visits Fide's village and discovers his brother has made a beautifully patterned basket from dyed raffia.

Adichie realizes that poverty had been her only single story of Fide and his entire family.

Adichie moves to the United States for university and meets her American roommate for the first time.

Adichie's roommate expresses shock and pity toward her, revealing a single story of Africa as a place of catastrophe.

Adichie traces the roots of Western single stories about Africa to colonial-era writing by English sailor John Lok.

Adichie admits she is also guilty of the single story after her assumptions about Mexico are challenged by a visit there.

Adichie asserts that power is central to understanding which stories are told and which become definitive.

Adichie poses a series of rhetorical questions imagining a world shaped by many competing stories instead of one.

Adichie announces a non-profit initiative with her publisher to build libraries and run reading and writing workshops.

Adichie concludes by calling on her audience to seek out many different stories and actively reject the single story.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie opens by introducing herself as a lifelong reader and storyteller raised in Nigeria, then walks her audience through the formation of her own single stories — from her exclusive diet of Western books to her limited view of her family's houseboy, Fide. Moving to the United States for university, she encounters her American roommate's single story of Africa as a place of catastrophe and pity. She traces the historical roots of this narrative to colonial-era writing and then turns the lens on herself, admitting she formed a single story about Mexicans through American media. She argues that power determines which stories dominate and which groups are defined by them. The talk concludes with Adichie calling for the active rejection of single stories through the pursuit of many different perspectives.

The core arc of Adichie's TED Talk on single stories.

Adichie recalls that her childhood British books featured characters eating apples, drinking ginger beer, and playing in snow.

Adichie writes a childhood story in which her characters eat apples, a fruit she had never actually tasted.

Adichie's discovery of African writers saves her from believing that books must only depict Western worlds and Western lives.

Growing up, Adichie is unable to see Fide as anything other than a pitiful figure defined entirely by his family's poverty.

Adichie's American roommate asks to hear Adichie's tribal music before knowing anything about her.

Adichie plays Mariah Carey for her roommate, who had expected something unfamiliar and distinctly African.

Adichie's roommate mails her a care package of food, assuming she must be hungry and suffering.

Adichie teaches a university course in America and a student argues her male Nigerian character feels inauthentic.

A professor tells Adichie her Nigerian novel is not authentically African because its characters seem too relatable.

Adichie reads aloud John Lok's account describing Africans as beings with their mouths and eyes in their breasts.

Adichie visits Guadalajara and observes ordinary Mexicans going to work, laughing, and rolling tortillas in a marketplace.

Adichie explains that she can read American Psycho without stereotyping all Americans because she has been exposed to many American stories.

Adichie recounts that her cousin died from lack of adequate healthcare caused by Nigeria's government mismanagement.

Adichie describes her parents losing their paychecks due to the government's repeated cuts to the education system.

A Nigerian woman stops Adichie and demands she write a sequel to one of her novels, claiming full ownership of the story.

This pool focuses on the concrete, specific moments that give Adichie's argument its texture and emotional force. It begins with the particular details of her childhood reading — apples she had never tasted, ginger beer she had never drunk — and the transformative realization that African literature could exist. The pool traces the specific incidents with her American roommate, including the tribal music request, the Mariah Carey reveal, and the care package, before moving to encounters with American academics who questioned the authenticity of her Nigerian characters. Adichie then shares the specific words of John Lok, the real scene she witnessed in Guadalajara, and the cases of family members harmed by Nigeria's government. The pool closes with the moment a Nigerian woman claimed ownership of Adichie's novel, insisting on a sequel.

The specific anecdotes and examples that illustrate each single story.

Adichie realizes in childhood that she had unconsciously come to believe literature could only depict Western people and places.

Adichie's discovery of Achebe and Laye transforms her understanding of who books can be written about and for.

Adichie's mother's repeated warnings about Fide's family shape Adichie's entire perception of him as an object of pity.

Adichie's roommate expresses disbelief that Adichie knew how to use a stove, revealing the depth of her single story.

Adichie realizes she only began to think of herself as African after moving to the United States and being labeled that way.

Adichie recognizes that her roommate's single story left no room for Africans to be complex human equals.

Adichie realizes that her roommate's view of Africa mirrors exactly her own childhood view of Fide's family.

Adichie identifies John Lok's writing as the historical origin point of centuries of Western stereotypes about Africa.

Adichie feels deep shame after recognizing that American immigration rhetoric had given her a single story of Mexicans.

Adichie declares that power means having the ability to make one story the definitive and only story of another person.

Adichie acknowledges that single stories can contain partial truths about a group but can never represent the complete truth.

Adichie returns home to Nigeria and witnesses both the country's infrastructure failures and its people's remarkable resilience.

Adichie reflects that African children, like her younger self, need to encounter stories about people like themselves in order to feel valued.

Adichie quotes Chinua Achebe's call for a balance of stories as the foundation needed to dismantle single stories.

Adichie quotes Alice Walker about displaced Southerners who found a kind of paradise regained by reading stories of their own lives.

This pool traces the moments of insight and transformation that form the intellectual spine of Adichie's talk. It begins with her childhood realization that she had unconsciously limited what books could be, and moves through the discovery that African literature could liberate her as both a reader and a writer. The pool captures how Adichie's mother's framing of Fide shaped a single story that persisted until she visited his village, and how her roommate's assumptions mirrored that same dynamic in reverse. Each subsequent revelation builds the argument: that colonial writing created a template for African stereotypes, that power determines who gets to define whom, and that partial truths are not the whole truth. The pool closes with Adichie quoting Achebe on a balance of stories and Walker on the restorative power of reading one's own narrative.