City News

The Thing Around your Neck, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, is a collection of short stories based on African life and culture.  Adiche uses her personal experiences to explore many ideas associated with African life.  One idea she explains is the “single story”.  She uses these stories to teach lessons and show her perspective on literature, a great source of knowledge for people all over the world, and how the incomplete representations of groups of peoples in literature shape stereotypes.  Interestingly enough, Adichie, who faced many people with incomplete understanding of her way of life, had her own misconceptions about groups of people as well.  The problem does not only affect one group of people, but everybody who learns and forms opinions about other groups of people.  I found this book particularly relatable, as “single stories” have occasionally shaped my views on groups of people before I became able to gain a full understanding and perspective of them myself.  The stories also tackle issues such as equality and freedom.  One of my favorite stories describes the life of an African woman destined for her culture to not be forgotten.

            Throughout the story “The Headstrong Historian”  Nwamba, the main character, feels increasingly unsettled and isolated as her heritage and culture slowly fade away.  Believing that her new granddaughter, Grace, has brought back the spirit of Obierika, she calls her Afamefuna, meaning “my name will not be lost”.  Grace’s birth fills Nwamba with excitement, as she feels the same spirit she felt in her late husband Obierika, and she feels that her heritage can be preserved.  As Grace grows up, Nwamba feels thrilled as she witnesses her interest in poetry and stories blossom.  Nwamba, though, worries for when Grace inevitably goes off to secondary school, as she believes Grace will lose her “fighting spirit”. When she finally does leave, Nwamba feels as if “a lamp had been blown out”, and before she dies, she wishes to see Grace, her final hope for the future, once more.  With school though, rather than abandoning her cultural identity, her belief in it is reinforced as she is skeptical of the school's methods.  

As Grace grows older, she rejects and rethinks much of what is taught to her in schools.  In a rapidly modernizing world, Grace feels a connection w Nwamba and her way of life.  Haunted by the thought of a destroyed village, Grace would sift through old records to imagine the “lives and smells” of the past.  The book she would eventually write, “Pacifying with Bullets: A Reclaimed History of Southern Nigeria”, represents her desire and devotion towards keeping her culture alive.  In her later years, Grace goes to the courthouse in Lagos to change her name to Afamefuna.  Her act of literally retaining a name from rooted in her culture also symbolizes her work of keeping her culture from being lost.  With her connection to her name and a passion for earlier ways of life, Grace, the headstrong historian, preserves her past.  

I really enjoyed this story, just as I enjoyed the entire book.  Nwamba and Grace’s urge to keep their culture alive showed me a lot about the world and about dying and thriving cultures.  It was a very thought provoking and enjoyable book, and is a must-read.  

Check out The Thing Around Your Neck at the Newport Beach Public Library.