The Thing

Around
Your Neck
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Unit I. Writing at the
Margins
• Ashcroft, Griffiths, Tiffin’s ‘Introduction’ to The
Empire Writes Back [New Zealand]
• Ngugi Wa Thiongo’s ‘Goodbye Africa’ [Kenya]
• Dambudzo Marechera ‘Black Skin What Mask’
[Zimbabwe]
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s ‘The Thing Around
Your Neck’ [Nigeria]
• Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart [Nigeria]
Unit I. Writing at the
Margins
• Overview of contemporary African writers
through multiple short stories and a novel.
• Discussion of Black identity as a colonial and
postcolonial construct.
• Assessing the texts beyond postcolonial issues.
Texts written by these authors are not exclusively
directed towards the West.
Postcolonial Literatures

• The black man among his own in the twentieth century does not know at what
moment his inferiority comes into being through the other […] And then the
occasion arose when I had to meet the white man’s eyes. An unfamiliar weight
burdened me. The real world challenged my claims. In the white world the man of
color encounters difficulties in the development of his bodily schema. Consciousness
of the body is solely a negating activity. It is a third-person consciousness. The body
is surrounded by an atmosphere of certain uncertainty. I know that if I want to
smoke, I shall have to reach out my right arm and take the pack of cigarettes lying at
the other end of the table. (‘The Fact of Blackness,’ Frantz Fanon, 15-16).
Postcolonial Literatures
• Displacement through immigration or enslavement is
one of the recurrent themes of postcolonial
literatures.
• The alienation experienced in the new territory creates
a crisis of identity connected to the roots of place,
language, community and culture.
• Characters develop a new self-consciousness of their
body as Other or coloured, that is, as deviations from
the dominant white identity.
Postcolonial Literatures
• In African literature, the production of blackness as
Other is tied to the gaze of the white colonizer.
• The white gaze defines what blackness is and leads to
the internalization of these values. These are the
opposite values of how Europe sees itself.
• Marginalization does not have to be expressed in
explicit gestures of racism but through the discourse
that legitimizes these ideas.
Chimamanda Ngozi
Adichie
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian writer whose work
includes novels, short stories and nonfiction.
• She has written several widely acclaimed novels like Purple
Hibiscus (2003), Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) and
Americanah (2013).
• She is also celebrated for her nonfiction: the collection of
essays We Should All Be Feminists (2014), Dear Ijeawele, or
a Feminist manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions (2017).
Chimamanda Ngozi
Adichie
• She defines herself as a feminist and has written extensively
on the topic. She is a defender and activist for LGBT rights in
Africa.
• She has written against ”cancel culture” several different
times after receiving criticism from the LGBT community.
• She divides her time between Nigeria and the United States,
where she teaches writing workshops.
‘The Thing Around Your
Neck’
‘The Thing Around Your
Neck’
• 'The Thing Around Your Neck’ was first published in
2002 as ‘You in America’ in the British magazine
Prospect 99.
• Adichie was shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African
Writing in 2002 for ‘You in America.’
• She published the short story again in 2009 with the
new title in the collection The Thing Around Your Neck.
‘The Thing Around Your Neck’

• You knew by people’s reactions that you were abnormal—the way the nasty ones were too nasty and
the nice ones too nice. The old white women who muttered and glared at him, the black men who
shook their heads at you, the black women whose pitiful eyes bemoaned your lack of self-esteem,
your self-loathing. Or the black women who smiled swift, secret solidarity smiles, the black men who
tried too hard to forgive you, saying a too-obvious hi to him, the white women who said, “what a
good-looking pair,” too brightly, too loudly, as though to prove their own tolerance to themselves.
(77-78)
• Adichie accounts for the experience of African immigrants living in the US in pursuit of the American
Dream. Consider the way she perceives herself through the eyes of Americans and addresses a “you”
throughout the narration. Who is that you she appealing to? Is that concrete person or not? How does
her experience reflect US culture?
‘The Thing Around Your
Neck’: American Dream
• The pursuit of the American dream outlines the
trajectory of Akkuna and, by extension, female
Nigerian immigrants.
• Dreams are grimly contrasted with reality. Akuna’s
friend define the American dream as cars, houses,
guns, and luxuries.
• The use of an unconventional second-person
narrator directly addresses a “you” who may
identify with her story, granting it a universal
quality.
‘The Thing Around Your
Neck’: American Dream
• Even if her uncle's house and life seem idyllic, America
shows is not hospitable to black people, and this is
expected and seen as normal.
• Her uncle’s abusive behaviour adds a grim perspective
to his statement about American ‘give and take’ (73).
• He expects her to give up her autonomy and body to
maintain the relatively comfortable life she has at his
home.
‘The Thing Around Your
Neck’: American Dream
• Her perspective as an immigrant estranges ”normalized”
aspects of US culture. E.g.: ‘You wanted to write about the
way people left so much food on their plates and crumpled a
few dollar bills down, as though it was an offering, expiation
for the wasted food’ (74).
• Akunna is disillusioned with the American dream but cannot
share her experience with her family.
• The second-person narrator is her imagined addressee who
can relate to her experiences.
‘The Thing Around Your Neck’

• It wasn’t just to your parents you wanted to write, it was also to your friends, and cousins and aunts and uncles. But
you could never afford enough perfumes and clothes and handbags and shoes to go around and still pay your rent on
what you earned at the waitressing job, so you wrote nobody.
• Nobody knew where you were, because you told no one. Sometimes you felt invisible and tried to walk through your
room wall into the hallway, and when you bumped into the wall, it left bruises on your arms. Once, Juan asked if you
had a man that hit you because he would take care of him and you laughed a mysterious laugh.
• At night, something would wrap itself around your neck, something that very nearly choked you before you fell
asleep. (74)
• The title of the short story is ‘The Thing Around Your Neck’ and the narrator refers to this object multiple and key
instances throughout the narration. What do you think that the narrator is trying to convey about her predicament and
feelings through this motif? How does it relate to her experience in the US as an African woman?
‘The Thing Around Your
Neck’: Displacement
• The loneliness and depression she experiences is the
“thing around her neck” and is connected to her
silence.
• Her inability to have a voice is a result of her
displacement in the US, leading to an identity crisis
and making her feel like a ghost.
• She realizes her “otherness” by sensing how she is
seen by Americans. E.g.: ‘You knew by people’s
reactions that you were abnormal—the way the nasty
ones were too nasty and the nice ones too nice’ (77).
‘The Thing Around Your
Neck’: Displacement
• Akkuna learns about the US imaginary of Africa
through her relationship with his American boyfriend;
the one who loves her.
• The relationship is limited by their different
experiences but, also, his unacknowledged white
privilege.
• The man can identify Nigeria on a map and is aware of
some of its ethnic groups. However, he romanticizes
the life of poor people in foreign countries.
‘The Thing Around Your
Neck’: Displacement
• While traveling is a personal journey of self-discovery
and sign of his privilege, for Akkuna it is determined
by material constraints and economic survival.
• His ability to choose to leave school and travel
indicates that he comes from a wealthy family. It does
not involve real displacement.
• Akunna's inability to understand how he can do that is
indicative of her own lack of choices and resources.
‘The Thing Around Your Neck’

• The Big Man seated at the back did not come out, but his driver did, examining the damage, looking at your father’s sprawled
form from the corner of his eye as though the pleading was like pornography, a performance he was ashamed to admit he
enjoyed. At last he let your father go. Waved him away. The other cars’ horns blew and drivers cursed. When your father
came back into the car, you refused to look at him because he was just like the pigs that wallowed in the marshes around the
market. Your father looked like nsi. Shit.
• After you told him this, he pursed his lips and held your hand and said he understood how you felt. You shook your hand free,
suddenly annoyed, because he thought the world was, or ought to be, full of people like him. You told him there was nothing
to understand, it was just the way it was. (76)
• The short story shows different arguments between Akkuna and the man. In some of these arguments Akkuna mentions that
there is nothing to understand, it was just the way things were. Why does she seem to be frustrated with him when he says he
understands?
‘The Thing Around Your
Neck’: Representation
• Like her own story, representations of African
people are important, as they determine the ways in
which they are treated in the US and other countries.
• Akunna's story shows that women are not the only
ones that suffer at the hands of Big Men in Nigeria
— poor men like her father are humiliated too.
• Though the boy is trying to be comforting, it is
obvious that he finds the story exciting and,
primarily, a story.
‘The Thing Around Your
Neck’: Representation
• Like other characters in the collection, the man does not
understand that this “story” is someone else's everyday
reality.
• Despite Akunna's confrontations, the boy remains
ignorant of his own power and privilege. He pretends to
understand her reality and appropriates African culture
to distinguish himself.
• He has the financial power to buy gifts and plane tickets
to Africa, things that Akunna will never be able to afford
because the American dream is not available to her.
‘The Thing Around Your
Neck’: Representation
• His upper-class upbringing is clear despite his efforts to
claim marginalized identities: he pretend that he is
African or act like “real” working class people.
• He can playfully appropriate these identities, whereas for
Akkuna this is her reality.
• Even if he claims to not be a "real" American by his
misguided standards, Akunna is painfully aware of his
privilege. E.g.: ‘You did not want him to go to Nigeria,
to add it to the list of countries where he went to gawk at
the lives of poor people who could never gawk back at
his life’ (77).
‘The Thing Around Your Neck’
• He said you were wrong to call him self-righteous. You said he was wrong to call only the poor Indians in Bombay
the real Indians. Did it mean he wasn’t a real American, since he was not like the poor fat people you and he had seen
in Hartford? He hurried ahead of you, his upper body bare and pale, his flip flops raising bits of sand, but then he
came back and held out his hand for yours. You made up and made love and ran your hands through each other’s hair,
his soft and yellow like the swinging tassels of growing corn, yours dark and bouncy like the pilling of a pillow. He
had got too much sun and his skin turned the color of a ripe watermelon and you kissed his back before you rubbed
lotion on it. The thing that wrapped itself around your neck, that nearly choked you before you fell asleep, started to
loosen, to let go.
• Akkuna describes how the thing around her neck wraps tighter than ever after making up with her boyfriend.
Consider the conclusion of the story. Why do you think this is the case? What was required for the relationship to
succeed or was it doomed from the outset?
‘The Thing Around Your
Neck’
• Narratives and stories from immigrants have
been popularized in recent years. Why is it
important to address experiences of
immigration in our contemporary political
landscape? Are there any potential dangers in
the treatment of these real experiences?