#260 The Headstrong Historian- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#260 The Headstrong Historian- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Sadly, this is the last of Adichie’s amazing The Thing Around Your Neck. I enjoyed this collection immensely.

In Onicha, Nigeria tribal life is hard. After Nwambgas husband dies (possibly killed by jealous cousins) she has little protection from those that would take what is hers. She sees salvation in the power of the white missionaries and sends her only son with them to learn English and the Western cultures so he wouldn’t have to suffer as she has.

She gets her wish. Her son is well on his way from rising above tribal life, but that causes different concerns for Nwamgba.

“Her pride turned into vague worry when she noticed that the curiosity in his eyes had diminished. There was a new ponderousness in him, as if he had suddenly found himself bearing the weight of a too heavy world.”

The more he learns about the world, the less he is attached to his heritage: “Nwamgba knew that her son now inhabited a mental space that was foreign to her.”

As generations grow, their culture becomes more hidden in more practical things like school, clothing, commerce. And yet, even those the farthest removed from the old world, reach out the hardest for even a handful of that richness.

Notable Passage: “People ruled over others, not because they were better people, but because they had better guns.”

Rating: 7-8-7-7 Total= 29

#172 The Diary of an African Nun- Alice Walker

#172 The Diary of an African Nun- Alice Walker

 “How to teach a barren world to dance? It is a contradiction that divides the world”

A young Ugandan nun struggles with the hypocrisy she sees in her chosen life. As she practices devoutly this stilted, rigid discipline, she is surrounded by her old rich culture.

“Through the window I hear the drums…feel the rhythm of the festival chants. And I sing my own [Christian] chants in response to theirs…My chant is less old than theirs. They do not know this—they do not even care.”

She does not have faith in her chosen life, she feels the true spirituality from her community and her land, but she knows it is doomed. She knows that Christian missionaries are the only hope of her people surviving, so she has made a choice.

“For the drums will soon, one day, be silent. I will help muffle them forever. To assure life for my people in this world I must be among the lying ones and teach them how to die. I will turn their dances into prayers to an empty sky, and their lovers into dead men, and their babies into unsung chants that choke their throats each spring.”

This is a scathing commentary on Western relations in Africa. It’s all too true and hard to hear, and harder to know that very little has changed or likely will chance. Conform to our social and religious believes or perish.

Notable Passage: “I am perhaps, as I should be”

Rating: 8-9-10-9 Total= 36

#83 The Thing Around Your Neck- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#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.

Rating: 8-8-9-8 Total= 33

#69 On Monday of Last Week- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#69 On Monday of Last Week- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

New to the U.S., Kamara takes a job as a nanny to a seven year old Josh. His father is a overly protective but supportive Jewish man married to an African-American artist who is locked up in the basement working on her latest project.

Kamara is over qualified to be a babysitter, but until her green card comes in she cant get a job more befitting her Master’s Degree. However the work seems to suit her, and she falls into a nice groove as Josh prepares for an academic competition.

Her understanding of the local culture has a bit of a learning curve as she “…had spent the past months watching court TV and had learned how crazy these Americans were.”

She sways back and forth between liking the Father’s parenting and judging it harshly:

“She had come to understand that American parenting was a juggling of anxieties, and that it came with having too much food: a sated belly gave Americans time to worry that their child might have a rare disease that they had just read about, made them think they had the right to protet their child from disappointment and want and failure.”

She finally meets the mother and is overwhelmed with emotions, meeting a woman that free, and open was intoxicating: “What had happened in the kitchen that afternoon was a flowering of extravagant hope…”

Another good story from this collection, artfully written. These are true short stories, complete and fully executed, perfect pacing and length.

Notable Passage: “…she still said nothing, because all he seemed to need, desperately need, was her listening and it did not take much to listen.”

Rating: 9-8-10-8 Total= 35

#55 Ghosts- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#55 Ghosts- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“Today I saw Ikenna Okoro, a man I had long thought was dead. Perhaps I should have bent down, grabbed a handful of sand, and thrown it at him, in the way my people do to make sure a person is not a ghost. But I am a Western-educated man…and I am supposed to have armed myself with enough science to laugh indulgently at the ways of my people.”

That opening paragraph of Ghosts, is a common theme of this collection. The older educated class of Nigeria battling old culture with new, African vs. the west, etc.  Both proud of living through war and corruption to better their families and lamenting the erosion of their heritage, even the narrator’s name, James Nwoye represents this dichotomy.

James is a retired professor, a widower, a father and a grandfather of children not born in Nigeria and losing their native tongue in just one generation. He runs into a man he thought long dead, and they share the tales of the past years.  Although not friends during the war years, they have too much in common to harbor bad feelings.

“He had forgotten [his wife’s] name and yet, somehow, he was capable of mourning her, or perhaps he was mourning a time immersed in possibilities.” Ikenna was “a man who carries with him the weight of what could have been.”

In retirement, James holds onto connections of his past, and the old ways despite the manner in which he lived his life, educated, well-traveled, progressive: “We are the educated ones, taught to keep tightly rigid our boundaries of what is considered real.” The ghost of his wife visits him often.

Word of the day: Harmattan – A dry dusty easterly or north easterly wind on the west African Coast occurring from December to February

Notable Passage: “It is our diffidence about the afterlife that leads us to religion.”

Rating: 9-7-8-7 Total= 31