A521.2.3.RB_MalvoisinLeon

Ms. Adichie delivers a powerful story to her audience, well presented and spoken. Her story has a beginning, a middle and an end that everyone in her audience can absolutely relate to.  She begins by introducing herself, and tells the audience what she does for a living which is storytelling among many of the skills she possesses.  She starts off her storytelling by telling the audience a story on her background, given a date, where she grew up, and when she started reading and writing.  As shared by Adichie in the video, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The danger of a single story (TED, 2009), as a child growing up reading Americans and  British children’s books, when I started writing at the age of seven the characters in my books followed the same characters of what I read about as a kid.  All my characters were white and blue-eyed, played in the snow and ate apples.  Ms. Adichie started off by telling a clear story.  A true story about herself that will help capture and retain the audience’s attention.  Here are few of the main elements of springboard story that she covered in her speech intro; as identify by Denning (2011), “The change idea being communicated by the story is clear and worthwhile and the story is based on an actual example.  She goes on by giving an additional example of how powerful a single story can be.  Which she illustrates by mentioning how she replicated the characters in her book base on what she had read about as a child in her kid novels.  As quoted by Adichie in the video, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The danger of a single story (TED, 2009), “My characters also drank a lot of ginger beer, because the characters in the British books I read drank ginger beer.  Never mind that I had no idea what ginger beer was”.  Certainly, what Ms. Adichie is implying is that the story she had been thought as a child replicates itself in her work and creates a preconceive notion of certain things in life without knowing all the details or facts.  That can be a dangerous thing, and she wants to change that way of thinking so no one is pre-judged or miss-judged.  Another key element she used in her story to make it a good springboard story is as identify by Denning (2011), the story makes clear what would have happened without the change idea. 

Her storytelling skill is very similar to what is discussed in the book and what I have learned thus far from this course.  She dresses casually and uses proper grammar throughout her whole speech.  She maintains eye contact with her audience and share few jokes every now and then, and then bring them back to her story.  She tells a springboard story that is authentically true and that can be validated or checked, if needed.   As stringboard story is about something that has really happened, not a made-up story about something that might occur (Denning, 2011).  Her story also has a single individual as the story protagonist which is herself, and she plays the hero role of trying to change the preconceive notion of people from Africa.  She does that by telling stories as well as writing books to help educate the young minds and the grown-ups.  Her stories has no pitfalls as she tells it in a minimalist fashion.  She gives numerous examples of how a story or a preconceive notion can impact someone’s life.    As stated by Adichie in the video, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The danger of a single story (TED, 2009),) “So, after I had spent some years in the U.S. as an African, I began to understand my roommate's response to me.  If I had not grown up in Nigeria, and if all I knew about Africa were from popular images, I too would think that Africa was a place of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals, and incomprehensible people, fighting senseless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS, unable to speak for themselves and waiting to be saved by a kind, white foreigner. I would see Africans in the same way that I, as a child, had seen Fide's family “.  This is a great example that put things in perspective, pretty much seeing the image of Africa from an American view point and help relate that vision to her audience.  Ultimately showing them the negative preconceive notion that she would like to change from people perspective of Africa.  To conclude, she links the change idea to the story by closing with a very powerful ending.  As stated by Adichie, “I would like to end with this thought: That when we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise” (TED, 2009).

References

Denning, S. (2011). The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative. San Francisco, CA:  Jossey – Bass.

 
TED. (2009).Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The Danger of a Single Story [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story/transcript?language=en