This book of short stories is amazing. I'm not always the biggest fan of short story collections because they feel sort of choppy to me, but that wasn't the case with this one. The Thing Around Your Neck was somehow more cohesive, working around a theme that I can't name but was definitely there.

There are 12 stories. Some take place in America and some in Nigeria, but all have Nigerians, usually women, as their main characters. No story disappointed, but "Jumping Monkey Hill" stood out the most. It's about some writers from Africa attending an African writers conference in England where they are told their life experiences aren't African in the way that Westerners understand Africa, and therefore not worth writing about. I'm butchering it. Just go read it yourself. It's amazing.