The thing around your neck
/ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- 1st North American ed.
- New York : Alfred A. Knopf , 2009.
- 218 p. ; 23 cm.
Cell one -- Imitation -- A private experience -- Ghosts -- On Monday of last week -- Jumping monkey hill -- The thing around your neck -- The American embassy -- The shivering -- The arrangers of marriage -- Tomorrow is too far -- The headstrong historian.
The stories are set both in the United States and in Nigeria, where things continue to fall apart. A privileged college student gets involved in gang violence; innocent women flee from a bloody riot; some characters are visited by ghosts, while others are haunted by the memory of war. Yet as one character puts it, an easier life in the United States is cushioned by so much convenience that it feels sterile. Relations between the races are awkward at best. The title story probes the emotional gulf between a young immigrant woman and her well-off white American boyfriend. The closing story, "The Headstrong Historian," is a miniature portrait of the colonial legacy in Nigeria.