The Thing Around Your Neck Book

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is one of the leading voices of African literature today. Her books Half of a Yellow Sun and Purple Hibiscus have won multiple awards and made her a respected writer of African issues. The Thing Around Your Neck is her first story collection, which weaves together tales of Nigerians in Africa and in the United States sharing the same hardships and love for their homeland.

The collection commences with the story of Nnamabia who is falsely accused of running with his university's gangs and thrown in jail. The father who is a university professor uses his position in the town to bribe policemen to get his son freed. The other stories that occur in Nigeria also involve either police violence, warfare during the revolution, or infighting between Christian and Muslim sects. Despite the almost constant warfare, the Nigeria that Adichie writes of is one of open air markets, joyful cultural celebrations, and a harmattan dry season during the winter that makes Nigerians abroad long to return. This is especially evident in story of the retired professor who returned from the United States and the woman at the embassy who chose to return to her family's ancestral village than seek a visa to asylum.

The title story sums up Adichie's feelings for Nigerians living in the United States. American life is easy-- rich people turning down food and still leaving a tip, a sterile lifestyle devoid of culture, people obsessing with minute details that aren't even heard of in Africa. The characters in these stories all long to go back whether for an extended holiday or to live. Most were children of the wealthy class and came either for school or because they thought they could provide an even better life for their children. Yet, these children end up speaking English, wanting pizza rather than native food, and desiring to change their names. Rather than a better opportunity, the children become typical American immigrants, and the African parents feel choked, pining to return to the Nigeria that they love.

Adichie's rich prose had me enthralled from the first pages. This is the first time that I have read her work, and I can see how her full length novels have won awards. Even in stories as short as ten pages, she has used vivid language to create multi-layered characters. I especially noticed this in the protagonists in Jumping Monkey Hill and The Shivering. These characters were so real and developed that I could not help feel their current life situation even after briefly reading about them.

Adichie ends her collection with The Headstrong Historian, a story of three generations of Africans coping with finding a balance between Christian proselytization and preserving their culture. The women in this story love their Nigerian culture and desire that it be passed down to successive generations. This is the Nigeria that Adichie has created for me in this collection- a country rich with culture that even if she has undergone her share of hardships, is a country looking toward the future, and one that all Nigerians living abroad long to return to. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has created deep characters with her rich prose here, and I look forward to reading her full length novels. The Thing Around Your Neck easily rates 4.5 shining stars.