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The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in Nigeria, and the land of her birth informs her short stories, whether the setting of the tale is Africa or the United States. Plaintive and poignant, they focus on characters and events that seem at once universal and foreign. A wife tries to come to terms with her husband’s infidelity, but while she is living in America, he is maintaining two households, one in Philadelphia with our protagonist and another in Lagos with his girlfriend. A woman thinks back on a dreadful experience in her childhood, one that resulted in the death of her older brother and realizes the ongoing impact of her actions down to the present day. A mother mourns the loss of her son, but her four-year-old was killed by government henchmen, and now she must decide whether to seek asylum in America or stay near the grave of her dear child. The stories show the reader the dilemma of the person who is at once living in one world but still attached to another one, a stranger in both lands, always seeking balance and peace but finding those gifts almost always out of reach.

D. L. S.

Labels: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, nigeria, Short Stories