#83 The Thing Around Your Neck- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The title story to this great collection ties together all
the themes we’ve seen throughout the book—The difficult, dangerous, tricky road
of moving across the world to a radically different culture.
Akunna, a character we’ve seen before, has won an American
visa lottery, moved to the northeast to live with a family friend and strikes out to make it in
this strange place. “The trick was to understand America, to know that America
was give-and-take. You gave up a lot, but you gained a lot too.”
Her ideas about America were skewed: “You thought everyone
in America had a car and a gun.”
But then again not as skewed as what American’s thought of
her “…a mixture of ignorance and arrogance.”
Her dealings with this ran the gamut from inane comments
about her hair, to the too-painful-not-to-be-true story of someone saying he
liked her because her name reminded him of the song from the Lion King…hakuna
matata.
All of this led her to stress and worry: “At night something
would wrap itself around your neck, something that very nearly choked you
before you fell asleep.” She didn’t contact her family (although she dutifully
sent them money each month) because she was confused about her new life, her
old life and how it all comes together.
She struggles with her relationship with a seemingly nice
and bright man because she looks to find fault in his genuine nature, to find
condescension in his opinions whether there or not. She struggles with her
resentment of his privilege. As she finds balance between her two cultures, that
thing around her neck loosens.
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