Short Review: The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Book: The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie* (Harper Collins, 2009)
Genre: Short stories
“The whole thing is implausible,” Edward said. “This is agenda writing, it isn’t a real story of real people.”
— Jumping Monkey Hill by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
A while ago, I read a review of The Thing Around Your Neck in one of those big publications like NYT or The Guardian, I can’t remember which exactly. Now that I’ve read it myself I can see the importance of Own Voices reviewers, not only on social media and book blogs, but in the big/“official” outlets too. The reviewer said there were some good stories here, but the weaker stories were the ones where the author was trying too hard to “make a statement”.
The best story of the lot, according to the reviewer, was ‘Tomorrow Is Too Far’ in which a sister reflects on her brother’s death many years after it happened. As it happens, this “best” story was the only one that could easily be transplanted into a different country or setting. There’s nothing structurally or thematically “Nigerian” or “black” or “immigrant” about it. The details of the coconut trees or the palm syrup could be replaced with something more “palatable” and American and you’d have much the same story.
On the surface there’s nothing political about it: nothing about feminism or the Biafran war or the struggles of immigrants. It’s “just a story” and apparently that’s what makes it good. Additionally, the reviewer’s point seems to be that artists shouldn’t be politicians and if they want to get political they ought to be really careful about how they do it.
I thought it was really funny that a reviewer did exactly what the character Edward does in Jumping Monkey Hill, a story in the collection about a woman who goes to a writing workshop in South Africa. Her story which Edward dismisses in the quote above is actually based on real events that happened to the protagonist.
We need to question this assumption that anything that reads like “agenda writing” can’t be a real story about real people. I am sure that readers can relate to characters who are very different from them — Adichie has reaffirmed this for me. And I am sure that authors can make “universal” statements about the human condition even with very specific stories and experiences — hasn’t that been going on for years and years? Haven’t we, in the global South for example, been reading narratives from the West with no trouble at all?
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