The Thing Around Your Neck

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

It is one of the things she has come to love about America, the abundance of unreasonable hope.

I will be forced to live a life cushioned by so much convenience that it is sterile. A life littered with what we call “opportunities.”

She had come to understand that American parenting was a juggling of anxieties, and that it came with 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. A sated belly gave Americans the luxury of praising themselves for being good parents, as if caring for one’s child were the exception rather than the rule.

because white people who liked Africa too much and those who liked Africa too little were the same—condescending.

You did not know that people could simply choose not to go to school, that people could dictate to life. You were used to accepting what life gave, writing down what life dictated.

You realized that in his life, he could buy presents that were just presents and nothing else, nothing useful.

You did not want him to go to Nigeria, to add it to the list of countries where he went to gawk at the lives of poor people who could never gawk back at his life.

he told you about his issues with his parents, how they portioned out love like a birthday cake, how they would give him a bigger slice if only he’d agree to go to law school. You wanted to sympathize. But instead you were angry.

There was something humiliatingly public, something lacking in dignity, about this place, this open space of too many tables and too much food.