The Thing Around Your Neck: The Connection and Interplay of Identity and Geography
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This paper is an academic project for ENGL 490 at Eastern Washington University
The Thing Around Your Neck: The Connection and Interplay of Identity and Geography[1]
Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie is a Nigerian author that has rapidly gained acclaim and recognition. Her work earned the Commonwealth Writers’ Best First Book Prize (2005), the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (2007) and she has been referred to as “Chinua Achebe’s 21st century daughter” (qtd. in Murphy 94) for the continuation of Achebe’s work as one of the “fathers of African literature” (Murphy 94) in decentralizing the English canon by writing from different perspectives from traditional English literature (Murphy 93-94). Her work includes the novels Purple Hibiscus (2003), Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), the short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck (2009), the novel, Americanah (2009), We Should All Be Feminists (2014), and Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions (2017). Adichie’s work features characters that are often in transition or exist between identities and she has referred to characters in both The Thing Around Your Neck and Americanah as “an inhabitant of the periphery” which mirrors and draws on some of her own experience (qtd. in Murphy 93). Adichie’s characters in The Thing Around Your Neck, through change in their geographic environment, experience a subsequent change in their identity—geography and identity are linked and changes in one affects the other, or the perceived relationship to the other. Identity and geography, therefore, coexist as “spaces” that overlap and react to one another. This relationship between identity and geography is foundational to “Imitation” and “The Arrangers of Marriage” in The Thing Around Your Neck.
In addition to her writing, Adichie is also known for her popular TED Talk “The Danger of a Single Story” in which she speaks out against the danger of a single narrative that creates a limited and biased understanding of a people—particularly the narratives that persist about the African continent and it’s many diverse people in a postcolonial world where the bulk of narratives are written, produced, and distributed with the colonial bias that Achebe fought to counter when he published Things Fall Apart in 1958, shining a spotlight on a culture and history that had been effectively erased or dismissed as irrelevant as he describes in his essay, “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness”. (Achebe 169-70). In this light, The Thing Around Your Neck is particularly interesting because the short stories it collects provide the reader, in a concise and compact volume, the opportunity to experience the power of the identity and space linkage from many angles in a variety of situations. All twelve of the short stories in The Thing around Your Neck feature protagonists that are in some way displaced, are dealing with a change or shift in the way they identify themselves, or in the way they are perceived by others—a transition frequently accompanied, if not triggered, by a change in geographic location.
The spaces in The Thing Around Your Neck are critical for the characters in the stories. Heba Sharobeem discusses the “way in which [space and place] inform and dictate human life, society, culture and gender relations, as well as knowledge production” and draws heavily on Lefebvre’s The Production of Space and Michel Foucault’s work on heterotopias—"the existence of many spaces that can sometimes be juxtaposed and combined in one site” (Sharobeem 18). According to Sharobeem, Lefebvre’s constructions of space are divided into a triad: spatial practice, representation of space, and representational space (Sharobeem 19). The first concept, spatial practice, is the daily routine that defines what we do and how we connect with others. The second, representation of space, is how space is “conceived or conceptualized” by those who “identify what is lived and what is perceived with what is conceived … this is the dominant space in any society” (qtd. in Sharobeem 20). Essentially, this is where history and ideology reside (Sharobeem 20). The third, representational space, is “directly lived through its associated images and symbols” … [the space of] that is inhabited and is the “passively experienced” space of the culture. (qtd. in Sharobeem 20) Thus, where the hegemonic cultural structure is experienced. Sharobeem connects the three spaces described by Lefebvre this way: “They refer to the physical space as we perceive it, to the mental space as we think of it, and to the actually lived social space with its symbols and idealized forms” (Sharobeem 21). This construct is a useful framework for recognizing the impact of geography and mental spaces and their impact on identity. Specifically, it is important to recognize “space is not an abstract void, but rather a product that denies homogeneity and which is shaped by different relations.” (Sharobeem 23).
Identity, for the purposes of this analysis, is how a person sees themselves both in isolation and in relation to their surroundings and relationships. With the diversity of spaces, both geographic and mental, that we move through and between, and that are available to us as we navigate life, are significant influencers on how we see ourselves and whether we identify with the culture in which we are immersed or whether we find ourselves as outsiders or “others” in unfamiliar places, mental or physical. The characters in The Thing Around Your Neck navigate these issues and, to a varying degree, their identities shift or transform as a result—or their identity demands the character modify their space or move to a different one that is more suitable.
In Adichie’s “Imitation,” Nkem is the wife of a wealthy Nigerian businessman, Obiora, and lives in a suburb of Philadelphia while Obiora divides his time between Lagos, Nigeria, and the house in the United States. Obiora visits Nkem and his two children for two months a year. The reader is introduced to Nkem as her friend recounts, by telephone, Obiora’s infidelity—he has a girlfriend in Lagos that is living in his home and driving his cars; the home which is also Nkem’s home when she is in Nigeria. Thus, the reader is immediately introduced to Nkem as someone who exists in multiple geographic spaces. Her home in the United States and the home where her husband spends most of his time in Nigeria. The entire story takes place in the United States, but Nkem’s mental space shifts between the Philadelphia home and the home in Nigeria. as Nkem ponders her life.
The geography that Nkem inhabits is a defining force in how Nkem identifies herself. The spaces which she describes in the story consist of her early life, growing up in a poor family in Nigeria. She also describes the spaces that her previous lovers met her: hotels, secret rendezvous, etc., her home in Philadelphia and her home with Obiora in Lagos. Each of these spaces has the attached portion of her identity at the time associated with it. While she was at home, she was the “ada,” the eldest sister and bore the responsibility associated with that position (Adichie 31). During her previous relationships, her identity was that of a girlfriend or lover and partially tied to her role as ada because her lovers provided for her and her family. Once she began a relationship, she went from secret girlfriend to a girlfriend that Obiora was not hiding, thus creating another identity, one with pride of position and relationship—“[he] took her to dinner at the vibrantly public Lagoon restaurant where anyone could have seen them” (Adichie 32). Once Obiora and Nkem are married, she adopts the identity of wife, overcoming her misgivings about not being of the class and status of “the wives of his friends” and, when her children are born, that of mother (Adichie 32). Her relocation to Philadelphia adds yet more aspects of Nkem’s identity: foreigner, immigrant, and other. Additionally, the servants that Obiora hires both in Nigeria and in Philadelphia foist the role of “Madam” on Nkem as well. Thus, her identity changes as her circumstances change. The circumstances provide different physical environments for Nkem to inhabit and in those physical spaces, her identity adjusts and conforms to the space and role she fills.
While the story is primarily told from Nkem’s point of view, Obiora also has multiple aspects to his identity and they are also largely governed by the geography he inhabits. In Nigeria he is a “Big Man”—a successful businessman—“one of Fifty Influential Nigerian Businessmen” (Adichie 27), and through extension also socially recognized, as Nkem recounts sarcastically, as a member of “Rich Nigerian Men Who Sent Their Wives to America to Have Their Babies league” and “Rich Nigerian Men Who Owned Houses in America league” (Adichie 26). This social space and the identity attached to it is important to Obiora and a large component of his self-esteem. It is the reason, according to one of the other Nigerian expats Nkem speaks with, that successful Nigerian men will not move full-time to America: “America does not recognize Big Men. Nobody says “Sir!” “Sir!” to them in America. Nobody rushes to dust their seats before they sit down” (Adichie 28-9). Obiora, therefore deliberately inhabits two geographic locations and splits his time and part of his identity between them. It is also telling that Obiora, who initially visited monthly, reduced his visits to only two months each year despite being proud of his children and bragging they are “Americanah now, oh!” (Adichie 38). An extrapolation of the status afforded him in Nigeria versus that afforded him in the United States allows for the reasonable conclusion that in addition to his business work, his identity and status in Nigeria are more significant to Obiora than his affection for his family. There is also the consideration that with his family in a far-removed Philadelphia suburb, he is free to live as he pleases, which includes the ability to have lovers and mistresses and to flaunt it publicly by having a live-in girlfriend that drives his vehicles around Lagos, as observed by Nkem’s friend (Adichie 22-3).
Nkem, while reflecting on her life with Obiora, allows the reader a glimpse into her identity and her internal dialogue as she processes the confirmation that Obiora is not faithful to her. She has always known that he has girlfriends, as Amaechi, Nkem’s “housegirl” reminds her during a candid conversation in the kitchen: “You know oga Obiora has girlfriends. You don’t ask questions. But inside, you know” (Adichie 35). The contemplation of what Amaechi challenges her with, the idea that she’s suppressed what she knows to be true, in favor of her imagined reality, provides a window into the value of not knowing. By not knowing or acknowledging the aspects of her life that conflict with the preferred, idealized vision, Nkem exists in the mental space that coincides with her representation of space. That is to say that her idealized identity is responsible for defining her reality and it is made possible in part by the geographic separation from the events that would challenge that idealized identity and reality.
Nkem’s internal conflict plays out through the ritual cutting of her hair. Obiora’s girlfriend is reputed to have short, curly hair. Nkem, despite Obiora’s fondness of her long hair, cuts her hair short. The act of cutting her hair is a conscious, deliberate, physical alteration of her identity. The hair becomes symbolic of the shift in Nkem as she finds herself and grows into herself as a fully formed person rather than a person that exists in relation to Obiora.
After Nkem’s transformation, her approach to Obiora’s annual visit is very different from her previous preparations: she doesn’t wax her body to his liking and she also doesn’t have the same passionate longing when he returns. Instead of a sexual encounter in the shower, she presents Obiora with the decree that she and the children are moving back to Nigeria. It is not up for debate; it is decided and Obiora accepts the fact. In this act, Nkem has changed both her mental and her physical space. She is not the subservient wife that dotes on her husband and accepts infidelity as something men do. She instead, asserts herself and claims her role as matriarch, mother, and wife. She realizes that in order to fulfill that role, her geographic space, her home, must be the family home and that the geographic separation is also a separation of identity, for both herself and for her husband.
As the characters in “Imitation” struggle through their situation, Adichie presents the reader with the subtext of Obiora’s fondness of collecting traditional masks. The masks serve to both inform and reclaim Nigerian history, to restate that the history of the Nigerian people and their customs long predate the colonial period in which the west plundered and subjugated the Nigerian people. They serve as what Bhabha would describe as a “haunting of history,” (Bhabha12) describing events in the story but also reminding the reader of the western exploitation of African artifacts. Ngwira argues that Adichie’s “deployment of such material objects in the stories thus shifts readers’ attention from the exotic and fetishized nature of the objects to the various histories and stories [the objects] evoke” (Ngwira 296). The masks also reflect a transition to authenticity for Nkem and her family. The beginning of the story references Benin masks that are copies. They are imitations, much the same way that Nkem’s life in the United States, separated from her husband, is an imitation life of a happy family. When Obiora arrives, he brings with him a genuine mask from the eighteenth century, the introduction of the first real artifact in the family collection also signals the end of imitation in their lives as Nkem claims her role and position and asserts herself by controlling and choosing her mental space as well as her geographic one.
“The Arrangers of Marriage” offers a different couple caught in an identity struggle that is very different from the one faced by Nkem and Obiora. Yet, despite the vastly different circumstances, there are similarities in the way geography and identity work upon one another. Chinaza Agatha Okafor is an orphan, raised by her aunt and uncle, and recently married to Ofodile Emeka Udenwa after the marriage was arranged between her aunt and uncle and Ofodile’s mother. The story opens with Chinaza’s arrival in the United States as Ofodile brings her to her new “house” which is a very sparsely furnished apartment—apartment 2B; a foreshadowing of the identity crisis and the question of an unknown future—what is to be. The story unfolds as Ofodile and Chinaza learn about one another and while Ofodile works to erase any semblance of Nigerian origin or behavior from Chinaza. Ofodile is trying to be hyper-American in order to fit in, or to avoid standing out. Chinaza, after some time finds out that Ofodile is still married to a woman with which he had a “paper marriage” in order to secure his immigration papers. This revelation, forces Chinaza to reflect and evaluate her position in her life and she finds herself stuck with Ofodile for the time being. The story ends as Chinaza, after a brief separation, walks back into Ofodile’s apartment, but the reader is left with the impression that she is not the same person she was at the beginning of the story.
Chinaza’s geography plays a large role in her identity. Growing up she was an orphan and very dependent on her Uncle Ike and Aunty Ada. Chinaza was very aware of her subservient position and perceived indebtedness to her aunt and uncle. She “thanked them for everything—finding [her] a husband, taking [her] into their home, buying [her] a new pair of shoes every two years.” (Adichie 170). Her identity as a dependent orphan, with little free will and fewer options resonates in this description of her environment. The transition to America promises both a change of location but also of identity. She will be the wife of “a doctor in America!” (Adichie 170) and with that expectation she also expects trappings of America, the impressions of which are the result of mass media and television. A phenomenon Fouad Mami describes as cultural reification, the abstraction of culture and life in the United States based on artificial influence – “the promise for a materially stable and satisfying life as circulated [publicly] through the media hides a nefarious call for false ideals and self-estrangement” (Mami 1).
Once in America, Chinaza’s disappointments begin to pile up very quickly. Her “house” does not have “a smooth driveway snaking between cucumber-colored lawns, a door leading into a hallway, walls with sedate paintings…like…in the American films that NTA showed on Saturday nights” (Adichie 167). Her husband is also not finished with his residency and earns little money and, the greatest part of the deception, he is already married. As a result, Chinaza’s identity in a brief span goes from dependent orphan, to American doctor’s wife, to illegal wife, and meanwhile the transition between these identities and circumstances is complicated with Chinaza’s immersion into a foreign culture and Ofodile’s effort to erase her Nigerian habits.
Ofodile exhibits a “fetishization of America … an obsession with social conformism, which translates into a strict adherence to what he perceives as typical American mores” (Tunca qtd. in Ngwira 293). Upon arriving in America, changed his name to “Dave Bell” because “in order to get anywhere you have to be as mainstream as possible” (Adichie 172) and he subsequently changes Chinaza’s name to Agatha Bell when applying for her immigration papers and social security number. The name change is the most obvious attack on Chinaza’s identity, but Ofodile also forbids her to cook traditional meals because “[he] didn’t want [them] to be known as the people who fill the building with smells of foreign food,” he forbids her from speaking her native language in public, and corrects her constantly when she uses English phrases in ways they’re not commonly used in the United States; he reprimands Chinaza for saying “you are welcome” when she meets the neighbor, Shirley, for the first time (Adichie 171-2). The cumulative effect of Ofodile’s hyper American behavior—the infatuation and fetishization of stereotypical American behavior—is both a suppression of his own identity while also a simultaneous oppression of Chinaza.
Nia, a neighbor that Chinaza becomes friends with, serves as a person with which Chinaza can be herself. Nia in this way, serves as a person that preserves Chinaza’s liminality. The relationship between the two women is without judgement (unlike Shirley) and because Nia has spent time on the African continent (Tanzania) and changed her name to a Swahili one, there is a space that allows each of them to exist without geographic norms binding their behavior. It also exposes the absurdity of Ofodile’s attempt to become hyper American. Chinaza reflects that “[Nia] a black American, had chosen an African name, while my husband made me change mine to an English one” (Adichie 180).
After Chinaza asks about the status of her work permit, Ofodile admits that it is held up by complications caused by his first wife, the one he married for immigration papers. The revelation is a shock and when Chinaza asks why Ofodile married her, his response is one of dehumanization and commodification. He first describes her as a helpless orphan that could not refuse the wishes of her aunt and uncle and then lists attributes he desired with the same emotion one might while listing desirable aspects of a new car: maybe “a virgin, … light skinned … light skinned children fare better in America” (Adichie 185). This assault on Chinaza’s identity, her commodification with no regard for her as a person, piles onto the way Ofodile has treated her throughout the story—sex without affection, mechanical interactions, and suppression of her individuality and choice, and it is what drives Chinaza to leave the apartment, seeking a different space, she goes to Nia’s apartment.
Nia’s apartment serves as a liminal space at this point. It is neither the apartment Chinaza shares with Ofodile, the oppressive space in which her identity is denied, and it isn’t Nigeria, the space where her aunt and uncle expect subservience in return for their “kindness.” Instead, Chinaza feels safe here as she decides what she should do, but even this space is challenged when Nia admits she’s had sex with Ofodile before. This admission disrupts the space in which Chinaza had previously found refuge. Instead, it isolates her further until she decides that until she has legal documentation, she is stuck with Ofodile in their circumstance.
Chinaza’s circumstances challenge her identity. She is not capable of changing her geography, but neither her home in Nigeria nor her home with Ofodile are appealing choices. Instead, Chinaza must find her independence and bide her time until she can be free of the prison in which she exists. While her relationship with Nia, after the revelation about her sexual encounter with Ofodile, is not as clean as it was before, the reader gets the impression that the relationship is not fractured. Therefore, the liminality of space and the relationship between the two women can continue to exist as Chinaza works to change her circumstances. Chinaza’s independent, free self, requires a change in location.
In both “Imitation” and “The Arrangers of Marriage,” Adichie features characters whose geographic location changes. The change of geography exposes conflict with identity tied to geography. Each character in these stories struggles with the adaptation required in order to reconcile geography and identity. This conflict is partially captured by the phenomenon of “double alienation … migrants cannot fully belong but exist only ‘on the edge of foreign cultures’ and … years spent abroad alienate them from their home countries as well” (Ngwira 287). Nkem is in a position that allows her to exert force in her relationship and to alter her circumstances by moving her family back to Nigeria. Thus, she alters her geography to better fit her identity—the one she wants to be—while also modifying Obiora’s identity; he will have to change his behavior if his wife is with him full time. Chinaza, unfortunately, is in different circumstances and lacks the power to make immediate changes in her geography or her relationship. However, the reader does get the impression that the conflict in her relationship and the abrupt change in geography serves to help Chinaza identify her independent self and that she will take steps to free herself from her oppressive circumstances and ultimately change her geography, her space, to one more suitable.
Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck is a compact, complex series of stories that offers the reader many layers to explore. The characters exist in multiple mental, social, and geographic spaces and the undertones and subliminal details of each story complicate both the characters and the stories Adichie is telling. All twelve of the stories in The Thing Around Your Neck provide the reader multiple perspectives and characters that each serve to challenge and to explore the complexity of the human condition; none of the twelve stories tell a single story.
Works Cited
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart: Authoritative Text, Contexts, and Criticism. Edited by Francis Abiola Irele. Norton, 2009.
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. The Thing Around Your Neck. Anchor Books, 2010.
---. “The Danger of a Single Story.” YouTube, uploaded by TED, 7 Oct 2009, www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. Routledge, 1994.
Mami Fouad. “Circumventing Cultural Reification: A Study of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s the Thing Around Your Neck.” Romanian Journal of English Studies, vol. 11, no. 1, 2014, pp. 215–225.
Murphy, Elena Rodríguez. "New Transatlantic African Writing: Translation, Transculturation and Diasporic Images in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck and Americanah". Prague Journal of English Studies6.1: 93-104. https://doi.org/10.1515/pjes-2017-0006 Web.
Ngwira Emmaneul. “Gendering the Transnational: History, Migration and Material Culture in Zoë Wicomb’s The One That Got Away and Chimimanda Ngozie Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck.” Social Dynamics, vol. 43, no.2 July 2017, pp. 286-297. EBSCOhost, doi: 10.1080/02533952.2017.1364472.
Sharobeem, Heba M. “Space as the Representation of Cultural Conflict and Gender Relations in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's ‘The Thing Around Your Neck.’” Rocky Mountain Review, vol. 69, no. 1, 2015, pp. 18–36. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24372861. Accessed 25 May 2020.
[1] Topic: Identity and Spaces In The Thing Around Your Neck; Focus: The changes and movement in the characters’ identity and its relationship to the inhabited mental and geographic spaces; Purpose: to persuade; Tone: academic/formal.
