...The women show courage and intelligence even though they are culturally suppressed. Discuss. The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie highlights the often challenging lives of Nigerian women living in Africa, but also abroad in the United States. It is however, not the difficulties which Adichie is ultimately focusing on, but the courage and intelligence of women who are able to make ‘small victories’, overcoming various attempts of cultural oppression. Adichie’s characters are subject to cultural suppression in several of the short stories. This is most pronounced in ‘The Arrangers of Marriage’ where Chinaza is forced by her husband to assimilate to her new surroundings by ridding herself of all signs of being Nigerian, as ‘to get anywhere you have to be as mainstream as possible’. This included giving up her native dress, language and food in order to fit into American culture. Furthermore, Dave’s request that she change her name, is perhaps the most significant sacrifice, as she became Agatha Bell, while ironically, her neighbor, Nia, had taken on an African name. This essentially makes her disappear in much the same way as Akunna in ‘The Thing Around Your Neck’. Akunna is striped of her Nigerian family through winning the ‘Visa Lottery’ and is then forced from her ‘uncles’ home due to his inappropriate actions. This lands her at the ‘last stop of the Greyhound bus’ in Connecticut and working in a café. The patrons regularly mistake her for Jamaica, as she...
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...The collection of short stories ‘The Thing Around Your Neck’ written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie demonstrates that in Nigeria, men women, boys and girls are treated differently, and these relationship in which gender inequality exists leads to family conflict. And corruption exists in Nigeria and also the violence. These issues have lasting impacts on the characters. Many of the characters experience violence, some due to civil war and conflict between religious groups, and others due to corruption. In the story ‘Cell One’ Nnamabia both witnesses and experiences violence in the Nigerian jail. When Nnamabia has been caught and put in jail, his family bribed police and guard to see Nnamabia. Also Nnamabia paid police to treat him better. These actions demonstrate that corruption is common thing in Nigeria. In addition, it shows the violence in jail. An old man is arrested because the police couldn’t find his son. ‘if they don’t find the person they are looking for, they will lock up his father or mother or his relative’. This shows how the violence exists in Nigerian society. Also Nnamabia is severely beaten when he tries to protect him. At this point, the writer uses the symbolism to highlight Nnamabia’s decline. ‘…he looked oddly sobre, an expression I had not seen before’. And author also highlights that the violence can change the identity of the person. At the end of story, Namabia has changed that no longer tells stories in a cheerful way and feels great compassion for old...
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...1 Transcending the limitations of diaspora as a category of cultural identity in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck Dr Elizabeth Jackson University of the West Indies St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago Having begun my academic career, not so long ago, as a postcolonial scholar, I have become increasingly critical of postcolonial theory on the grounds that for an increasing number of literary texts by so-called postcolonial writers, postcolonial theoretical approaches may have outlived their usefulness. One example is the Nigerian-born writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s collection of short stories The Thing Around Your Neck, published in 2009. My paper will examine the ways in which these stories explore the limits of diaspora as a category of cultural identity and move toward a more flexible conceptualization of the impact of globalization on people’s sense of themselves and their place in the world. Although the main characters in these stories are of Nigerian origin, few of them fit easily into the limiting categories of ‘Nigerian’ or ‘Nigerian diaspora’. This is not only because their geographical placement is often in flux, but also because their sense of identity is not based on nationality, national origin, or even a sense of belonging to a Nigerian diaspora. On the contrary, they can arguably be described as ‘cosmopolitan’ – not in the old elitist sense of the term, but in the sense of transcending the limitations of nationality or...
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...YWCA Indianapolis P.O. Box 40264 Indianapolis, IN 46240 T: 317-250-8593 EM: ywcaindy@sbcglobal.net www.ywcaindy.org Questions for “The Thing Around Your Neck” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Cell One 1. What were your thoughts on this first story about the spoiled boy, Nnamabia who stole from neighbors and his own family and always got himself out of whatever jam he was in? 2. Why do you think his family let him get away with such actions for so long? Could you tell they treated boys differently than girls? Do we have examples of such in our own lives. 3. What do you think about the subtle wording about how those that were stealing from around the campus grew up watching Sesame Street, reading Enid Blyton, eating cornflakes, attending school in polished brown sandals? Do you think she was subtly saying something about those actions? a. Educated and wealthy parents straying from their traditions and having the children be westernized in teaching and upbringing, yet maybe westernized upbringing doesn’t help the children as much as you think? b. These were the children that were spoiled. Riding their parents cars, seats pushed back, armed stretched out to reach the steering wheel. 4. Any similarities to the U.S. to the parents reaction to the stealing? a. Denial. b. Blaming riff raff in town when their own children were committing acts b/c of their lack of discipline. 5. Were you surprised with the concept of beauty being those closer to the white persuasion? a. Why did you waste...
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