REVIEW: The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
What it Means When Writing Becomes a Birdsong.
Blurb from the Publisher/Goodreads.com
Searing and profound, suffused with beauty, sorrow, and longing, the stories in The Thing Around Your Neck map, with Adichie's signature emotional wisdom, the collision of two cultures and the deeply human struggle to reconcile them.
REVIEW
I remember the first day I came upon this book. It was a sunny weekday (I don't remember the exact day). I was a fresher new to the four walls of the University, trying to know. To be. So this is a reread after five years! Whoop-whoop!
The Thing Around Your Neck is a collection of twelve short fictions by Nigerian author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Now, I believe everyone happens to know the incredibility of Adichie's talent. I have read vividly all her works, I mean every single one of them, and through the times that I have read her, she does a great job at keeping me awed and glued, so you wouldn't blame me for rereading this book. Lol.
Adichie writes about home, so the fictions are set in Nigeria, while some are not, but even these diaspora fictions have the Nigerian sentimentality and homeyness evident in each one of them.
This fiction focuses mainly on the lives and experiences of Nigerian woman— their lives in marriages, religious and political violence, and challenges adjusting to Western Culture. However, there is a single male narrator, who also tells his story.
The styles this collection flourishes on include; the third, second, and first-person narration, which are also written in the past, present, and future tenses. However, Adichie's juggling of the future present tense, and present tense in this collection is an applaudable innovation.
In the first fiction "Cell One" Adichie goes on a journey to past Nsukka, Nigeria. The fiction is narrated through the eyes of a teenage girl, who tells the story of her family; their shortcomings, her observations; and the unexpected events that stirred a series of changes in the life of her brother.
"Imitation" presents the typical ordeals of long-distance marriages. It follows Nkem, a Nigerian married woman living in isolation. Adichie presents her fear of separation, the effect of this separation, and eventually the shift into self-awakening.
"A Private Experience" tells the story of Chika and the disappearance of her sister, Nnedi. They are both undergraduates of The University of Lagos, who on one afternoon happens to get caught up in the heat of the Igbo Massacre in Kano, during their visit to an Aunty. The fiction begins with Chika going into hiding in an abandoned shop with a Hausa woman "an onion seller". With this fiction, Adichie shows the religious intolerance between the Igbos and Hausas and asserts that the differences fought about by these two lock horns can be overlooked to allow the progression of unity.
Later, Chika will learn that, as she and the woman are speaking, Hausa Muslims are hacking down Igbo Christians with machetes, clubbing them with stones. But now she says, “Thank you for calling me.
Ghosts" set in Nsukka, Nigeria is the only fiction in the collection that features a male perspective and it is told in a first personal narration in the voice of a retired professor of Statistics, who relates an encounter between a former colleague and the professor believed died during the Brafia and Nigerian military war which ended in 1970.
Today I saw Ikenna Okoro, a man I had long thought was dead. Perhaps I should have bent down, grabbed a handful of sand, and thrown it at him, in the way my people do to make sure a person is not a ghost. But I am a Western-educated man, a retired mathematics professor of seventy-one, and I am supposed to have armed myself with enough science to laugh indulgently at the ways of my people.
Ghosts denote the losses of war; the destruction and recount how everyone who experiences war is casualties—whether they are dead or alive. This story takes us back into the war world Adichie relayed in her prize winner: Half of a Yellow Sun.
"On Monday of Last Week" follows Kamara; a Nigerian immigrant, who on arrival in America, realizes her marriage had become a facade. However, her life got into good form after an incredible event happened on Monday of last week. This is a story on self-realization.
"Jumping Monkey Hill" is told in a first-person narration by Ujunwa. It focuses on the ordeals of writing; the hard work it requires; the nervousness and self-doubt associated with writers. This story also talks about the reoccurring harassment women face in their workplaces, courtesy of the predators—men. In the end, Adichie shows the remarkable way, the affected women rose above this nuisance.
“The Thing Around Your Neck" the fiction whom this collection is named after uses the second personal narration to place readers in the shoes of a struggling Nigerian immigrant. After winning a visa lottery, Akunna moves in with her uncle in America in search of the American dream.
You thought everybody in America had a car and a gun; your uncles and aunts and cousins thought so, too. Right after you won the American visa lottery, they told you: In a month, you will have a big car. Soon, a big house. But don’t buy a gun like those Americans.
Instead, Akunna suffers from molestation by her uncle, loneliness, depression, unacceptance, and rootlessness.
"The American Embassy" uses the third person narration to drift readers into the thoughts of a distressed mother, who after losing her only young son to the senselessness of Nigerian political thugs, tries to seek asylum in the comfort of America to unite with her husband, a voice-of-the-people journalist.
He fights repression with the pen, he gives a voice to the voiceless, and he makes the world know.
It is so surprising to see how this "mighty pen" becomes the sower of a cursed seed—her mighty pain.
"The Shivering" follows Ukamaka and Chinedu, both Nigerians living in America—they are brought together by a tragedy. It recounts the events of loss, love, low self-esteem, and self-assuredness as readers are shown at the end following the event of the breaking free of Ukamaka.
In "The Arrangers of Marriage" Chinaza, an orphaned woman who moves to America with an arranged husband, relays the struggles and cultural shock she encountered on her arrival; her arranged husband is the exact opposite of what she imagined—a rich medical doctor, a traditional man with a traditional Igbo name— instead he tries to assimilate her into the American culture by forbidding Nigerian delicacies…
My new husband came back half an hour later and ate the fragrant meal I placed before him, even smacking his lips like Uncle Ike sometimes did to show Aunty Ada how pleased he was with her cooking. But the next day, he came back with a Good Housekeeping All-American Cookbook, thick as a Bible.
“I don’t want us to be known as the people who fill the building with smells of foreign food,” he said.
…and changing her Igbo name to something” English” and easy.
You have to use your English name here.”
“I never have, my English name is just something on my birth certificate. I’ve been Chinaza Okafor my whole life.”
“You’ll get used to it, baby,” he said, reaching out to caress my cheek. “You’ll see.”
When he filled out a Social Security number application for me the next day, the name he entered in bold letters was AGATHA BELL.
But in the end, Chinaza discovers who needs to be.
"Tomorrow Is Too Far" uses the second person narration to recount the unforgettable August event in the life of a Nigerian woman who during her adventure in search of love and attention from family let an envious desire plant a cursed seed that would keep sprouting forever in her life.
"The Headstrong Historian" is a fiction that reflects solely on the theme of identity. It follows the lives of powerful women: Nwamgba, Ayaju, and Grace. It portrays the Igbo community before the advent of Christianity and how colonialism dug a pit of rootlessness and alienation, this is vividly seen in the lives of Mgbeke and Anikwenwa who after baptism became "Michael". I felt as though I was rereading Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart when I read this particular story and I thought Nwamgba symbolizes Okonkwo.
My rating: I give it a 4.8 🌟
My verdict is: Everyone should read this. I look forward to rereading Americanah!