Blog 3:

This week in class we read a story called “The Arrangers of Marriage” written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The story follows a young woman from Africa. Her name is Chinaza. Her Aunt and Uncle marry her off to an African American man who lives in the states and is said to be a rich doctor. When she arrives in America with her new husband she discovers he lives in a tiny apartment and is a med student who is in the middle of his residency. Her new husbands name is Dave. He is obsessed with fitting into the American culture. He does not let Chinaza use her real name and instead gives her an American name to use instead, Agatha. He asks that she only cooks American food and that she only speaks English. He tries to pick her friends and denies her wish to get a job.
Dave is a very controlling significant other. He wants his wife to be more like a servant to him than an actual wife. He wants to her to just follow his orders and fulfill his physical needs. That’s not fair to Chinaza. She is being held hostage in a marriage that is not at all what it was promised to be. She is having to change who she is and leave her culture and all she knows behind for someone who is not even who they said they were. Dave is still technically married to an American woman. He is not a doctor. He is not rich. He doesn’t have an actual house. Yet Dave gets to control Chinaza and call all of the shots for the rest of her life.
This story hit hard with all its points of a controlling and abusive relationship. No one should be allowed to control someone else just because they are in a relationship or married. Dave had no right to choose Chinaza’s friends or decide that she was not going to get a job. He wanted her to be dependent on him so she would not have the option of leaving. He kept reinforcing to her that she needed him.
I could see a lot of myself as well as my mom in Chinaza’s character. Not particularly from the culture part but from where she was having to change who she was and felt like she couldn’t do anything she wanted because of her relationship. I personally have been in a relationship where my significant other wouldn’t let me hang out with my friends, wouldn’t let me wear certain clothes, couldn’t go out with my family etc. because they didn’t like it. I watched my mom completely change herself, dye her hair, talk differently, act differently, change her interests for someone because she felt she couldn’t leave. That’s not something anyone should have to do. You should’t have to change or submit to someone to make a relationship better, or in Chinaza’s case, to have a better life. If anything Chinaza’s life is no better or worse than it was before when she lived in Africa. She’s knows it too, but she is now stuck with no way out.
This short story left me wondering what would happen next for Chinaza. Will she stay with Dave and basically be his maid that he can sleep with? Or will she find a way out because she realizes life in American is no better than in Africa?