The Danger of a Single Story | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | TED

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, (Laughter) and they talked a lot about

the weather, how lovely it was that the sun had come out.

(Laughter) Now, this despite the fact that I lived in Nigeria.

I had never been outside Nigeria.