Composition Multimedia Project - Bruno

Below is Bruno's explanation of the project, followed by images that show the development and process of completing a piece of art related to Adichie's talk. Bruno writes - 

In "The Danger of A Single Story" TED Talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, she described the limitations of stereotypes and the freedom in seeing people beyond their single story. I chose this TED Talk because it was one of my favorite topics discussed in class. I decided my project to be in PowerPoint format, because it enabled me to show the process I went through to make my drawing. In each slide, I was able to show each step I went through to make it. I specifically wanted to make a drawing showing different people gathered together. From the beginning, I knew the person in the center of my drawing holding the “human” banner would be a drawing of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Since she was the speaker in the TED Talk it felt fitting to put her front and center. 

"The Danger of A Single Story" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie states, “It had not occurred to me that anybody in his family could actually make something. All I had heard about them was how poor they were, so that it had become impossible for me to see them as anything else but poor. Their poverty was my single story of them” (Adichie 3:31). As Adichie explained, we frequently form an idea of people around one concept. We will make assumptions on race, religion, ethnicity, or sexuality because of small characteristics that people may have. We create a single story about others such as; they are Asian so they must be good at school, or Mexican so they love tacos. Another quote from Adichie is, “I must say that before I went to the U.S., I didn't consciously identify as African. But in the U.S., whenever Africa came up, people turned to me. Never mind that I knew nothing about places like Namibia. But I did come to embrace this new identity, and in many ways I think of myself now as African” (Adichie 5:09). Adichie describes what it was like having a label applied to herself. Her American roommate who knew she was African made assumptions like, “I did not know how to use a stove” (Adichie 4:33). It took getting to know Adichie that her roommate grew to see beyond the single story.