June 21, 2009
BOOK REVIEW: 'The Thing Around Your Neck': Short Stories by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Brilliantly Illuminate Cultural Gap Between Her Native Nigeria and U.S.
By David M. Kinchen
Huntingtonnews.net Book Critic
The African nation of Nigeria might as well be on another planet as far as most Americans are concerned. So it was with anticipation that I read a collection of 12 short stories by 31-year-old Nigerian writer Chimamand Ngozi Adichie: "The Thing Around Your Neck" (Knopf, 240 pages, $24.95).
I wasn't disappointed. I'm a devotee of short stories and Adichie's are as nuanced and well written as any I've encountered in recent years. You'll be entertained, enlightened and come away a better person after reading this collection that toggles between the two nations, exploring the clash of cultures, the divides between men and women and the different social classes in both countries.
Adichie, a MacArthur fellow and the author of two acclaimed novels ("Purple Hibiscus" and "Half of a Yellow Sun"), divides her time between the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S. and Nigeria and has gone on record as saying she "absolutely likes America. But it's a complicated affection, an affection that is very willing to criticize."
Take "The Arrangers of Marriage," with young bride Chinaza Agatha Okafor adapting to life with her Nigerian doctor husband in New York City. He has sloughed off his Nigerian name in favor of good old American "Dave Bell" and he boldly enters his new wife's name on her Social Security application as "Agatha Bell." She meets the tenants of his apartment building, learns to navigate an American supermarket and fills the building with the pungent aromas of Nigerian cooking -- until her husband tells her he doesn't want people in the building being reminded that they're immigrants, even though he loves the cooking. And she discovers more about her husband than she could have ever imagined.
I noticed that Adichie uses the American word "trunk" referring to the luggage compartment of Dave's and Agatha's car; in a story titled "The American Embassy" she uses the British/Nigerian word "boot" referring to the luggage compartment of a dissident journalist's car: "The day before, she had driven her husband in the boot of their Toyota to the home of a friend, who smuggled him out of the country." Ugonna is in line at the American Embassy in an attempt to secure an asylum visa after their four-year old son is murdered by soldiers searching their house for her husband. The interaction between Ugonna and the interviewer at the American Embassy will enlighten and touch you more than a dozen news stories.
Much has been written about the ongoing ethnic/religious clashes between the Muslims of Northern Nigeria and the Christians of the southeastern part of the country, the former breakaway province of Biafra, which was subdued by the central government only after a brutal civil war from 1967-70. In "A Private Experience" a Christian woman medical student, Chika, and a Muslim Hausa women shelter together in a store during an ethnic riot and learn that they have more in common than they thought. The riot started when a Christian man inadvertently drove over a copy of the Koran in a parking space and was hacked to death by Muslim men. Chika is worried sick about her sister Nnedi, when they were separated at the start of the riot, and the Hausa woman -- nameless in the story -- is equally worried about her family. Adichie is an ethnic Igbo, the people who were in the majority in Biafra.
In "Cell One", a teen-age girl and her family are dealing with her brother's arrest for being a member of a "cult" -- the Nigerian equivalent of an American gang, mimicking the American version's dress and rap music. Her brother's involvement with the cult, which started out as a fraternity but rapidly descended into robbery and murder, finds him imprisoned in a police roundup, confronting the kind of casual brutality he had only read about. It's a coming of age tale with a twist.
"Ghosts" tells of two older men recalling their experiences during the Biafran war of '67-'70: "Today I saw Ikenna Okoro, a man I had long thought was dead. Perhaps I should have bent down, grabbed a handful of sand, and thrown it at him, in the way my people do to make sure a person is not a ghost. But I am a Western-educated man, a retired mathematics professor of seventy-one...."
Adiche indulges her gentle, subtle criticism of American parenting in "On Monday of Last Week," which features Kamara, a Nigerian woman working as a nanny/housekeeper for politically correct Neil, a white Jewish man and his African-American artist wife Tracy. The upper-middle class couple on the Main Line of Philadelphia are raising their son Josh to be aware of both their cultures and are eager to expand young Josh's horizons. The humor in this story is nuanced and brilliantly demonstrates the versatility of the author.
Another story suffused with comedy, "Jumping Monkey Hill," brings together a diverse group of Africans in a two-week writer's conference in Cape Town, South Africa. The story effectively demonstrates the cultural differences of people from South Africa, black and white, as well as residents of Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Nigeria. The story will resonate with writers and possibly with members of book groups.
I've already decided that "The Thing Around Around Your Neck" belongs on my list of notable books of 2009. If you want short stories that you'll remember for a long time, read this collection. You'll find yourself rereading the stories, to catch the subtleties you may have missed the first time around, to glory in the work of a young writer who has mastered a difficult art form.
Publisher's website: www.aaknopf.com
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BOOK REVIEW: 'The Thing Around Your Neck': Short Stories by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Brilliantly Illuminate Cultural Gap Between Her Native Nigeria and U.S.
By David M. Kinchen
Huntingtonnews.net Book Critic
The African nation of Nigeria might as well be on another planet as far as most Americans are concerned. So it was with anticipation that I read a collection of 12 short stories by 31-year-old Nigerian writer Chimamand Ngozi Adichie: "The Thing Around Your Neck" (Knopf, 240 pages, $24.95).
I wasn't disappointed. I'm a devotee of short stories and Adichie's are as nuanced and well written as any I've encountered in recent years. You'll be entertained, enlightened and come away a better person after reading this collection that toggles between the two nations, exploring the clash of cultures, the divides between men and women and the different social classes in both countries.
Adichie, a MacArthur fellow and the author of two acclaimed novels ("Purple Hibiscus" and "Half of a Yellow Sun"), divides her time between the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S. and Nigeria and has gone on record as saying she "absolutely likes America. But it's a complicated affection, an affection that is very willing to criticize."
Take "The Arrangers of Marriage," with young bride Chinaza Agatha Okafor adapting to life with her Nigerian doctor husband in New York City. He has sloughed off his Nigerian name in favor of good old American "Dave Bell" and he boldly enters his new wife's name on her Social Security application as "Agatha Bell." She meets the tenants of his apartment building, learns to navigate an American supermarket and fills the building with the pungent aromas of Nigerian cooking -- until her husband tells her he doesn't want people in the building being reminded that they're immigrants, even though he loves the cooking. And she discovers more about her husband than she could have ever imagined.
I noticed that Adichie uses the American word "trunk" referring to the luggage compartment of Dave's and Agatha's car; in a story titled "The American Embassy" she uses the British/Nigerian word "boot" referring to the luggage compartment of a dissident journalist's car: "The day before, she had driven her husband in the boot of their Toyota to the home of a friend, who smuggled him out of the country." Ugonna is in line at the American Embassy in an attempt to secure an asylum visa after their four-year old son is murdered by soldiers searching their house for her husband. The interaction between Ugonna and the interviewer at the American Embassy will enlighten and touch you more than a dozen news stories.
Much has been written about the ongoing ethnic/religious clashes between the Muslims of Northern Nigeria and the Christians of the southeastern part of the country, the former breakaway province of Biafra, which was subdued by the central government only after a brutal civil war from 1967-70. In "A Private Experience" a Christian woman medical student, Chika, and a Muslim Hausa women shelter together in a store during an ethnic riot and learn that they have more in common than they thought. The riot started when a Christian man inadvertently drove over a copy of the Koran in a parking space and was hacked to death by Muslim men. Chika is worried sick about her sister Nnedi, when they were separated at the start of the riot, and the Hausa woman -- nameless in the story -- is equally worried about her family. Adichie is an ethnic Igbo, the people who were in the majority in Biafra.
In "Cell One", a teen-age girl and her family are dealing with her brother's arrest for being a member of a "cult" -- the Nigerian equivalent of an American gang, mimicking the American version's dress and rap music. Her brother's involvement with the cult, which started out as a fraternity but rapidly descended into robbery and murder, finds him imprisoned in a police roundup, confronting the kind of casual brutality he had only read about. It's a coming of age tale with a twist.
"Ghosts" tells of two older men recalling their experiences during the Biafran war of '67-'70: "Today I saw Ikenna Okoro, a man I had long thought was dead. Perhaps I should have bent down, grabbed a handful of sand, and thrown it at him, in the way my people do to make sure a person is not a ghost. But I am a Western-educated man, a retired mathematics professor of seventy-one...."
Adiche indulges her gentle, subtle criticism of American parenting in "On Monday of Last Week," which features Kamara, a Nigerian woman working as a nanny/housekeeper for politically correct Neil, a white Jewish man and his African-American artist wife Tracy. The upper-middle class couple on the Main Line of Philadelphia are raising their son Josh to be aware of both their cultures and are eager to expand young Josh's horizons. The humor in this story is nuanced and brilliantly demonstrates the versatility of the author.
Another story suffused with comedy, "Jumping Monkey Hill," brings together a diverse group of Africans in a two-week writer's conference in Cape Town, South Africa. The story effectively demonstrates the cultural differences of people from South Africa, black and white, as well as residents of Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Nigeria. The story will resonate with writers and possibly with members of book groups.
I've already decided that "The Thing Around Around Your Neck" belongs on my list of notable books of 2009. If you want short stories that you'll remember for a long time, read this collection. You'll find yourself rereading the stories, to catch the subtleties you may have missed the first time around, to glory in the work of a young writer who has mastered a difficult art form.
Publisher's website: www.aaknopf.com
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Make HNN Your Homepage (IE Users Only)
