Purpose:   Practice writing a narrative-style essay (an essay in which you tell a story) reflecting on your own experience of believing a single story or experiencing the single-story assumptions of others.    Task  Context  In her lecture “The Danger of a Single Story”, video or Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie points out that we all have been exposed to “single stories” of different groups, including groups we belong to.  According to Adichie, “single stories” are dangerous because they present this single story of a group of people as if it were THE ONLY story of this people.  We accept a single story without question, and the story in turn shapes our attitudes and opinions of other people and ourselves.  What You Need to DO  For this paper, write essay examining your experience either being on the receiving end of a single story OR having believed a single story yourself about an identity group (this group might be one you belong to OR one you don’t).   Your essay should do two things:  Tell the story of the single story. Make your reader feel what it felt like to have someone have an incomplete and inaccurate sense of who you are.  If you are writing about a single story you have had about a group, make sure you give us the full picture of how and why you had this single story.  Examine the effects of the single story on you. Don’t just write, “it affected me”…explain how and why.  Did it change the way you behaved?  How did you feel?  Did it shut you off, open you up, make you feel angry or ashamed?  What did you do with this feeling?   Essay Organization  You can structure this paper in several ways.   1) One way would be to start by telling the story of the experience.  Use details and concrete images to show your reader the experience. Then, in a second or third paragraph, analyze the effects of the story on you.  Look at the questions above to help you develop your analysis.  2) You could also start with a discussion of the effects and then go into the specifics of the story.   Either way you structure it is fine, just don’t switch structures halfway through your essay.      Important Tips for Success    Remember that each paragraph needs to have one central focus.  When you start a new topic/focus, start a new paragraph.  Make sure you very clearly state what the single story is.  Don’t assume your reader knows what you mean.  If you are talking about how you used to have a single story of white girls, say it upfront, and say what that single story is (for example, white girls are clueless).