The Dangers of a Single Story

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Knopf, 2025)

Reviewed by Sarah Linville

In 2013, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie achieved most widespread fame with her address “We Should All Be Feminists” and followed that up with her novel, Americanah. But before that, in 2009, Adichie delivered her TED talk “The Danger of a Single Story,” which has since garnered nearly 50 million views. That talk involves the danger of stereotypes when approaching others. In a compelling early example in the speech, Adichie recounts how an American college roommate expressed an overbearing pity toward her, assuming all Africans were poor and starving, even though Adichie’s family was solidly middle-class and able to send her to university in the U.S. Adichie also describes her own shame when visiting Mexico after weeks of U.S. news coverage that had made “immigrant” and “Mexican” nearly synonymous. She says, “I realized that I had been so immersed in the media coverage of Mexicans that they had become one thing in my mind, the abject immigrant. I had bought into the single story of Mexicans and I could not have been more ashamed of myself.”

For Adichie, the problem with stereotypes is “is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” Her 2025 novel Dream Count is in many ways an answer to this TED talk: instead of one African immigrant story, she tells four—three Nigerian, one Guinean.

Broken into five parts, Dream Count follows Chiamaka (Chia), who opens and closes the book, her best friend Zikora, her housekeeper Kadiatou, and her cousin Omelogor, as they move through their early adulthoods to middle age. Their stories overlap but also stand alone, creating four companion novellas unified by Chia’s frame narrative. Thematically, they are also linked by their pursuit of their own versions of the American Dream. While the structure at some points makes it difficult to ascertain the chronology of their overlapping timelines, it offers an intriguing picture of how their four parallel lives intersect and impact each other.

With a title like Dream Count, it is a safe bet to expect that this will not be a happy novel—perhaps, like a body count, the carcasses of dead dreams will litter the landscape by the time the novel is finished. And, in some sense, this is true. Much of the novel is focused on the hardships of culture clashes, the COVID-19 pandemic, and, most of all, the frustration of endlessly disappointing men. However, just as Adichie argues that there is no one common experience in “The Danger of a Single Story,” she also argues that there is no one definition of a dream achieved in Dream Count. As she explores these women’s stories, she also explores the nuances of pursuing fulfillment as an outsider in the context of contemporary American life.

The novel opens with Chia’s declaration of her dream: “I have always longed to be known, truly known, by another human being” (1). She expresses this desire just as the COVID-19 pandemic is taking shape in New York City, and her story weaves in and out of flashbacks and her experience during lockdown. Chia looks for this sense of being “known” predominantly in romantic relationships. Much of her time is spent recounting horrible boyfriend after horrible boyfriend.

Chia’s story directly challenges the story that Adichie’s roommate believed about all Africans. Far from struggling to survive in Nigeria, Chia’s family is opulently wealthy. Chia pursues her dream of being a travel writer and eventually a novelist by jetting off from country to country and attempting to publish articles that recount the African traveler’s experience in those places, to varying degrees of success. When she sets out to collect these stories into a full-length book, she is told that they aren’t “African” enough. She is told that she should instead focus on a book about her struggles being black in America first, echoing criticism Adichie faced when she was first breaking into the American literary market. Even in attempt to create a version of a “single story”—what it is like to travel as a woman of color—that story strays too far from what publishers believe the general market will buy. Though largely absorbed in her romantic life, Chia briefly reflects on whether she is achieving her dreams, both career and romantic, when she asks her married British boyfriend, “Are you living the life you imagined?” He replies, “No, but who is?” She answers, “I need to believe some people are. Otherwise, what’s the point of it all?” (82).

Zikora’s story follows. Zikora is also a financially well-off Nigerian immigrant to the United States. She has a successful law career, but she dreams of fulfilling the traditional Nigerian roles of wife and mother. Like Chia, she has very little luck in finding good potential matches, trying to “fix” almost every romantic partner she meets. Kwame, the one she spends the most time with, has rotting chicken bones all over his apartment when he meets her, but by the end of their relationship, she has set things straight. However, as it is with Chia, it becomes clear that none of these men can truly fulfil Zikora’s dreams, and her life also passes by mostly unsatisfied.  

Kadiatou’s section is the most heartbreaking. Introduced as Chia’s housekeeper, she recounts her youth in Guinea, her arranged marriage, and her enduring love for Amadou, who promises to send for her from America. After tragedy and hardship, she joins him in the U.S., only to face new betrayal and trauma. Yet Kadiatou “dreams of only achievable things” like stability and safety (184). She may be more content than any of the other women by the end of the novel. In refusing to dream beyond what is possible, she avoids the danger of a single, idealized version of the American Dream, or any dream.

Omelogor is perhaps the most “successful” of all the women before she leaves Nigeria. She works for a company with a boss whom she refers to only as “CEO,” and it quickly becomes clear that her main job is to launder money for him. She has a gated home, staff to care for it, and has devised a way to siphon money from her job to give to women-owned businesses as “Robyn Hood” grants. However, when her Aunty chastises her for not being married with kids yet, it throws her into a tailspin. She doesn’t even know if she wants kids or not. She upends her life and moves to the U.S. to write a masters in cultural studies thesis on pornography as a strange way to deal with this discomfort. Her time in academia only makes her spiral further, and soon she heads back to Nigeria and resumes her previous life, just as the COVID-19 pandemic sets in. Her story underscores that America cannot complete a life that was already full. It only exposes the emptiness of believing in one “dream,” or letting someone else choose your dream.

While none of the sections of the novel end particularly cheerfully, Dream Count is not expressly a depressing book. The relationships between the characters are woven together throughout the book. While the women may believe that their dreams are unfulfilled, the friendships between the four of them are rich. As Kadiatou goes through public scrutiny, the other three women bond to support her, often gathering on Zoom to encourage her. As Omelogor struggles through graduate school-induced depression, Chia makes sure she continues to eat and bathe. Zikora receives a lot of support from Chia, especially when she gives birth as a single mother. Omelogor, Zikora, and Kadiatou all support Chia when relationship after relationship comes to an end. Although Chia can’t see it, perhaps she is truly known after all—just by the women in her life, not the men.

Dream Count may not be expressly depressing, but Adichie’s depiction of men, however, is. All the male characters share the single story of being irredeemable. Some are narcissistic, others racist, others disappointing, and others hopelessly flawed. Omelogor runs a blog called “Dear Men” in which she advises men on how to be decent people. In one post, she writes, “Dear men, your gamer girlfriend isn’t exaggerating. Women who love playing video games online don’t like to play with their own voices, because once they do, men start threatening them with rape. Good guys like you need to call this out” (298). She ends each of these posts with the line, “Remember, I’m on your side, dear men.” While the women in this novel have plenty of flaws, they are complexified through the rich internal perspective that Adichie gives each of them. Adichie’s treatment of men feels like it should be satire, but the novel’s more serious tone prevents this interpretation from holding ground. Instead, most of her male characters read like caricatures of the worst traits of men in 21st century society.

Despite this flaw, Dream Count still includes pockets of some of the best of Adichie’s writing. Her humor and precision in Dream Count recall Americanah’s salon scenes. In Dream Count, one of the funniest commentaries she makes is her indictment of academia. When Chia is dating Darnell, a university researcher, she attends a few parties with him and his academic friends. At one such party, his friend Shannon says, “It’s interesting to think about the ways in which the Black diaspora is invisible in Latin America” (24). Chia then thinks, “she said ‘the ways in which’ very often. They all did” (24). Later, when Omelogor is in grad school, she thinks,

But the work wasn’t demanding at all. It was too soft, like spongy, slippery foam. Everything was about exploring, we were all exploring, always exploring, and we could say we didn’t have the answers because we were just exploring, and so we didn’t need to boldly risk coming to clear conclusions. Sunk in the miasma of exploring, we cast off clarity. There was little pressure and no real rigor. In the undergraduate class I audited, because the title ‘Neuroscience and Emotion’ interested me, a student raised his hand and said his paper was late because his dog had an ear infection. I thought he was being funny and we were supposed to laugh, but the professor said okay and asked how the dog was doing. (340-341)

The blasé incredulity that both Chia and Omelogor feel through these comments allows Adichie to both bring some levity to the difficult situations the women are facing (an emotionally unavailable partner for Chia, a mental health crisis for Omelogor) and expose the dangers of another single story—that American academia is always the gold standard of global intellectualism.

The other integral piece of the American dream that Adichie criticizes is the value of money in the United States. When Kadiatou is still reeling from her traumatic experience in her hotel job, her Asian coworker tells her, “In America, justice is money. You don’t see how they celebrate big money judgments…you deserve American justice, money” (234). Later, when Omelogor is reflecting back on the poverty of her youth versus the wealth of her present day, she thinks, “But Jamila is really saying that money is an armor and she is right. Money is an armor, but it is a porous armor. No, money is an armor and it is a porous armor. It shields you, feeds you the potent drug of independence, grants you time and choices” (285). Adichie’s nuanced view on money—its ability to set women free through Omelogor’s laundered “Robyn Hood” grants but also its ‘porous’ inability to bring any real healing to Kadiatou—demonstrates that with money, too, there is no single story. Adichie shows that both degrees and money, two of America’s most defining markers of prestige, have limitations, and considering both their positives and negatives is important.

Adichie’s take on America in Dream Count isn’t all bad. While much of her commentary through the novel is critical, America has some redeeming qualities in the book—Kadiatou’s quiet pursuit of earning money to build a comfortable life with her daughter, where they can cook their favorite foods and watch TV together in the evenings, is one of the most endearing. In her TED talk “The Danger of a Single Story,” Adichie says, “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.” While it is clear that America is not purely a paradise for the women in Dream Count, perhaps through understanding their different perspectives, we can move closer to regaining that paradise.  

Sarah Linville earned her bachelor's in English and secondary education at Palm Beach Atlantic University and her master's in English and American studies at the University of Oxford. She has taught English in Palm Beach County, in Spain on a Fulbright grant, and currently teaches in Littleton, Colorado.