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The Thing Around Your Neck

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Start date: September 1, 2018

Finish date: September 29, 2018

Discussion: Author's Pick

Why we're reading this: September Author Pick: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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What Members Thought

Dec 23, 2018 Jeanne rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-women, read-2018, african-african-american, read-around-the-world, short-stories

I am a big fan of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Her language is evocative. She names microaggressions in a matter of fact way: The first thing that came to Ujunwa’s mind was to ask if Isabel ever needed royal blood to explain the good looks of friends back in London (p. 99). Her stories help me identify US values more clearly, recognize other possibilities, and consider how I want to live.

Adichie's stories often make me uncomfortable (in a good and necessary way).

Her collection of short stories, T I am a big fan of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Her language is evocative. She names microaggressions in a matter of fact way: The first thing that came to Ujunwa’s mind was to ask if Isabel ever needed royal blood to explain the good looks of friends back in London (p. 99). Her stories help me identify US values more clearly, recognize other possibilities, and consider how I want to live.

Adichie's stories often make me uncomfortable (in a good and necessary way).

Her collection of short stories, The Thing Around Your Neck is no different. Some stories take place in Nigeria, others in the US, although the narrators are Nigerian, often female, often but not always fierce feminists.

Life in the US is cushioned by so much convenience that it is sterile (p. 67). Our "successes" are a mixed blessing: a juggling of anxieties from having too much food: a sated belly gave Americans time to worry that their child might have a rare disease that they had just read about, made them think they had the right to protect their child from disappointment and want and failure (p. 82). US values, anxieties, and fear can choke you: At night, something would wrap itself around your neck, something that very nearly choked you before you fell asleep (p. 119).

While things in Nigeria are not perfect – children fall from trees or are murdered, people riot or are enslaved – Adichie also describes small connections, many of which are missed in the US, even between Nigerians. During a riot in Kano, Chika, a medical student, was trapped overnight with a Muslim woman.

Afterwards, Chika will read in The Guardian that “the reactionary Hausa-speaking Muslims in the North have a history of violence against non-Muslims,” and in the middle of her grief, she will stop to remember that she examined the nipples and experienced the gentleness of a woman who is Hausa and Muslim (p. 55).

It was not where they lived that mattered to her, it was what they had become (p. 83).

Remember who you want to become. ...more

6 likes · Like · see review

Nov 06, 2016 Maya B rated it really liked it

Shelves: africa

I really love this author's writing style. This is a book of 12 short stories. This author has a very masterful way of telling stories from the viewpoint of Nigerians. My favorite stories were "The shivering" and " The arrangers of marriage" ...more

6 likes · Like · see review