Apr 06 2009
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck
I just noticed that The Guardian in the Uk talked with Chimamanda Adichie about her new short story collection, The Thing Around Your Neck, which just came out in the UK on April 2, but is scheduled to be released by Knopf on June 26 in the USA. Adichie is on an exhausting book tour in the UK.,
You see, I already read the review copy for the US version of the book and I enjoyed it. The Thing Around Your Neck shows the wide range of issues that Adichie is likely to explore in future works, although some of the stories are older than her two novels. I was happy to see that she portrays the America I have experienced, of getting to establish myself in a country that knows little about mine, but pretends it knows a lot, and we are talking about those ordinary Americans who walk up to you in a Borders Books and say, “You are from Nigeria, right?” and you say, “No, I am from Zambia,” and they smile and say, ” I could tell you were from Nigeria.”
The stories about America are about the pursuit of dreams, yet they reek with disappointment. The title story is very revealing of the things most people can relate to. There are the ordinary assumptions by ordinary and well-meaning Americans that any black person who has an accent is from Jamaica. As an African immigrant I didn’t get much of the Jamaican stuff, but my questioners were pretty certain I was from Nigeria, so often I was tempted to say, “Sure.” Why blame them? What’s the difference? So it was really nice to read something I could relate to in the pieces about America. They show that Adichie is a sensitive writer, getting to the heart of the matter: she hates silly stereotypes, she is intolerant of simple assumptions, and will stop at nothing to suggest a correction. She extends the Achebe defiance against the Conradian perspective about Africa to a more techno-age, where, even when most people have a choice to seek to know what they should, they still remain in the land of ignorance, so they approach you and tell you what country you are from, and you ask them why, and they say because they used to know so and so from the same country. Such ignorance is just intolerable, Adichie seems to argue.
But don’t think that Adichie’s critique ends with America; she takes you to Nigeria and shows you the corruption, the moral decay. The characters are just as unsafe in Nigeria as they are uncertain in America.
In “Cell One” we see Nsukka for what it is; gangs, police brutality, bribery as a way of life, crime. Elsewhere in the stories, Nsukka keeps coming back. The story “Imitation” presents a woman who has been left to live the American dream by a rich husband who, back home in Nigeria, has a mistress. This is a new set up: he just wants his wife to live in America while he does what he wants in Nigeria; perhaps he gets the mistresses because he boasts that he has a wife in the USA. Guess what, the next opportunity the wife gets, she wants to return with him to Nigeria. You know she wants to go see for herself what has been going on, and perhaps beat someone up.
“A Private Experience” was mysterious, but it delt with an issue I have heard somewhere, the religous conflict between Christians and Muslims. The unnecessary killings; the usual stories you read about in the newspapers, but Adichie captured the mystery of the such events. The story ends with an act of generosity which cuts across religions.
Adichie did a fantastic job with “Jumping Monkey Hill”, which is about a writer’s workshop in Cape Town, organized by the British (Council). Good cause: help Africa write, but in so doing, help its new authors write what you want them to write. Much of what’s lucrative about African writing comes through writing contests organized by British philanthropic names, an new way of canonizing African literature; there is the Caine; there is the BBC, there is the Commonwealth. A writer who gets one of these has immediate validation. They even will have veteran African writers for judges, bringing the Nobel validation, and often the stories read like hurricans, will unsettle and disorient you, as was my experience with Brian Chikwava’s “Seventh Street Alchemy”, but Adichie did not start her writing by winning one of these– she, however, has since been validated with the Orange Prize and an American genius award of 500 grant which says, “Focus on Writing.” Ah, who would say no to such a big gift, especially if it says, don’t worry, just write? Adichies writes, and still sees something wrong with such awards and fellowships if they come with hidden agendas. I loved the story, especially since I never enter some of these contests.
I read “The American Embassy” at a time the American Embassy in Zimbabwe was declining a visa application for someone, a really delicate situation, but they said, without using these exact words, “we could care less.” In Adichie’s story, someone who deserves a visa based on necessary asylum ends up walking away from the interview because she has determined that no visa is worth the trouble her country people have to go through. That was Adichie at her best in the department of compassion and sensibility. Very accessible but stinging story. Adichie has also opened a thematic chapter on an arranged marriage, Nigerian style. I know most American readers love the Indian arranged marriage stories; well, there is also something like them in some African cultures. And like in Divakaruni and other Indian writers, in Adichie story America becomes the ultimate reward for agreeing to the arranged marriage, a doctor for a husband, and perhaps a big house and a big car.
But when she gets to America, there is nothing of substance for her there. The doctor is really not a doctor yet, and he revels in things American, teaching her this and that, but to no effect. By the end of the story, this arranged marriage is really arranged, just like the husband married an American for his papers, and had sex with someone who turns out to be his Nigerian wife’s friend. And wait, the marriage with the American was never dissolved, so this arranged marriage with a homegirl, were it to be exposed, is an illegal marriage in America. And so the wife from Nigeria will just relax until she gets her papers. Perhaps she will meet a Tyrone and leave the husband.
Nice stories these. The language is simple, but the stories are captivating. Adichie gets slangy in places, indulging in the “F” word in different stories. Her Nigerian characters mingle with American ones and they are not immune to Americanization; in fact, most them seek Americanization.
The thematic range expands. Adichie deals with themes ranging from fraudulent marriages to same-sex relationships, corruption and immigration. The stories are a taste of the direction Adichie’s fiction may expand into. The voice is even stronger here and promises to continue seeking the justice of existence, the right for everyone to be looked at more carefully.
Great work, Adichie.
