13 Annotated Bibliography

Denkyi-Manieson, Agyeiwaa, Gladys. “Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun and The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: A Thematic Study.” Journal of Pan African Studies, Vol. 11 Issue 1, pp. 52-65. 2017. Accessed on 12 Nov 2023.

Eromosele, Ehijele Femi. “Sex and Sexuality in the Works of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.” The Journal of Pan-African Studies, vol. 5, no. 9, Mar. 2013, p. 99. Accessed 12 Nov 2023. 

• “Sex and Sexuality in the Works of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie” by Ehijele Femi Eromosele works to study the attitude of sex and sexuality within Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s work. This source was published in a journal synthesis of African community studies that works to discuss and assess historical and contemporary issues portrayed in African literature. The author highlights how Adichie’s work is a positive contrast from traditional Nigerian fiction. The author draws from Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun, and The Thing Around Your Neck to dissect the narrative of sex positively within Adichie’s work. The author concludes that Adichie does not adhere to the restrictions of sexuality and sexual expression placed on members of the LGBTQIA+ community by certain cultures and religions. Adichie rather embraces the identities and portrays them as normal human characteristics. Eromosele’s insightful analysis underscores Adichie’s significant role in challenging societal norms.

  This source acts as a literary analysis of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s work with a queer theory critical lens applied. Eromosele’s analysis underlines Adichie’s use of narrative structure to challenge heteronormative constructs. Readers can gain a better understanding of how Adichie works to advocate for a positive space for sex and sexuality within her literature.

Hewett, Heather. “Coming of Age: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and the Voice of the Third Generation.” English in Africa, vol. 32, no. 1, May 2005, pp. 73–97. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,cpid&custid=ns149246&db=a9h&AN=19862710&site=ehost-live.

• “Coming of Age: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and the Voice of the Third Generation” by Heather Hewett is an article in the English in Africa journal. It serves as a discussion of the “Third Generation” of Nigerian writers, of which Adichie is a part, and how they are subverting norms and making room for previously suppressed and/or underrepresented stories. The author hesitates to claim a singular literary tradition for Nigeria, as traditions are constantly changing and thus can lead to dangerous generalizations. But Hewett claims that Adichie and her fellow Third Generation writers are making room for more nuanced, detailed conversations about life in Africa. The article has a particular emphasis on voicelessness, mainly that of women writers and characters, which fits in perfectly with our discussion of The Thing Around Your Neck. This article helps readers better understand Adichie’s background and gives cultural context to the stories she writes and how they fit into the larger literary framework of Nigeria.

Ifeoluwa Mary, Amusan. “Adapting to Life in America: Cultural Loss in the Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.” Confetti, vol. 8, 2022. Accessed 12 Nov. 2023. 

• “Adapting to Life in America: Cultural Loss in the Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie” is a reflective paper contributed to the eighth volume of Confetti from the University of Ottawa by Amusan Mary Ifeoluwa. This journal piece reflects on the works of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie using instances of cultural loss in Adichie’s stories through the analysis of the character’s immigration stories. Mary Ifeoluwa employs theoretical concepts of acculturation, transculturation, and assimilation to highlight the cultural negotiations and loss that Adichie’s characters face in order to adapt to a new country. The paper draws upon L. Hall’s concept of cultural loss, Fernando Ortiz’s critical understanding of acculturation, and Wolfgang Welsch’s notion of transculturation to analyze how characters grapple with the challenges of retaining their original culture while integrating into America. This critical analysis provides a comprehensive understanding of the complex processes of cultural negotiation and identity formation faced by immigrants.

  The text provides a multifaceted exploration of cultural dynamics, making it valuable for a diverse range of readers interested in literature, cultural studies, and the complexities of identity in the context of migration. Readers may use this text as an insightful literary analysis of the psychological and socio-economic implications of migration.

Minter, Jennifer. “A more hopeful future: The Thing around your neck.” English Works, https://www.englishworks.com.au/summary-thing-around-neck/. Accessed 12 Nov. 2023. 

• “A more hopeful future: The Thing around your neck” by Dr Jennifer Minter examines the narrative devices used by Chimamanda Adichie Ngozi. Minter examines themes of politics, women’s rights, religion, immigrant experiences, and the consequences of political and social change. Minter dissects Adichie’s uses of narrative devices to elaborate on a deeper socio-political and cultural message within Adichie’s work. Minter also examines the depth of the characters within the novel, noting symbolism and the impact of historical events. Minter calls for a hopeful future, arguing that Adichie’s work can be interpreted as an advocation of compassion, tolerance, and an invitation to return to one’s cultural roots with pride.

  Dr. Jennifer Minter’s analysis of The Thing Around Your Neck provides a comprehensive literary analysis for Adichie’s narrative techniques. Providing historical, religious, cultural, and political context, readers can use Minter’s examination of Adichie’s work as a guide to understanding the importance of the novel on a deeper level. Minter’s examination of gender roles, politics, and cultural identity offers readers a more intricate understanding of the thematic layers within Adichie’s writing. Minter’s work overall can be described as an argumentative piece that employs the use of multiple critical lens to argue her point of a hopeful future.

Palmer-Mehta, Valerie. “The Subversive Power of Survivor Rhetoric: An Innovative Archive of Survivor Discourse in New York Magazine.” Women’s Studies in Communication, vol. 41, no. 2, May 2018, pp. 159–82. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1080/07491409.2018.1471764 

• “The Subversive Power of Survivor Rhetoric: An Innovative Archive of Survivor Discourse in New York Magazine” is a scholarly article by Valerie Palmer-Mehta that references the NYT cover story “‘I’m No Longer Afraid’: 35 Women Tell Stories about Being Assaulted by Bill Cosby and the Culture That Wouldn’t Listen”. This article discusses the culture around sexual abuse, and in particular the difficulties for survivors to speak up and face their attackers. Palmer-Mehta contends that the discussion of sexual violence needs to be centered on women’s lived experiences, and that creating a popular culture archive of these experiences helps “intervene in dominant discourses and builds alternative community history”. She also focuses on the need for survivors to reclaim their power by using their own voices to tell these stories in ways that protect them from the culture of disbelief and suppression that still surrounds sex abuse testimony. The article lends clarity to Adichie’s character’s abuse, and the inherent lack of agency in such a situations. It sheds light on a powerful aspect of reclamation, that to take her power back a woman needs to center her own voice in the conversation regarding her abuse.

Plate, Liedeke. “Remembering the Future; or, Whatever Happened to Re‐Vision?” Signs, vol. 33, no. 2, 2008, pp. 389–411. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.1086/521054. Accessed 27 Nov. 2023. 

•  In Remembering the Future; or, Whatever Happened to Re‐Vision? it responds and builds upon Adrienne Rich’s concept of Re-vision. It establishes an understanding of re-vision as a critical term and the impact the call to re-vision Rich inspired. This inspired retelling and explorations of stories from postcolonial, feminist, gender, and queer perspectives. It builds the definition of re-vision and it’s affectual relationships with texts of the past being rewritten to express different perspectives. It tackles the rebuttal of parasitism of rewriting older stories. Plate represents the motives of Re-vision while exploring a myriad of writers and stories rewritten. Another contention of this articles is how it ties Re-vision to consumerism and how it’s become intersected in product and concept.

  This article gives an argument source of what re-vision is, was, how it influenced writing, and how it will look in the marketplace of writing and what the future of re-vision may look like. This may also be a method source of how the concept effects writing so it may be applied analyzing texts for the effects or re-vision on that specific text or authors writing style.

Rather, Manzoor Ahmad, and Mahmood Ahmad Khan. “A Correlational Study on Emotional Intelligence and Self-Actualization of Creative Writers.” Indian Journal of Positive Psychology, vol. 11, no. 4, Dec. 2020, pp. 308–12. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,cpid&custid=ns149246&db=a9h&AN=148893813&site=ehost-live.  

• Correlational Study on Emotional Intelligence and Self-Actualization of Creative Writers by Manzoor Admad Rather and Mahmood Admad Khan is a shorter article that expounds upon their study on the relationship between factors of emotional intelligence and self-actualization of Creative writer of Jammu & Kashmir. They list many personality characteristics such as self-sufficiency, independence, openness, stability, tolerance to ambiguity, and self-confidence as associated with the process of creativity. While various personal and situational factors that go with or predict the creative performances such as originality, redefinition, flexibility, fluency, elaboration, and evaluation. After going through many of the terms and their studies correlations between variables with the most notable being the significant positive relations between self-actualization and emotional intelligence in participants.

  This is a great argument source for finding statistics that tie personality traits and situational factors tying into creative or self–actualized writers.

Rich, Adrienne. “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision.” College English, vol. 34, no. 1, 1972, pp. 18–30. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/375215. Accessed 27 Nov. 2023. 

• “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision” revolves around the concept of revision obviously. Re-vision as an act of looking back at texts and notions from a new direction to understand women’s identity and her refusal of the self-destructiveness of male-dominated society. Adrienne Rich writes about the play When we dead awaken along with other works and authors such as herself who have to work around much of the status quo while charting new territory in their identity and writing. The writing identity seems to be broken down in contentions of texts that men write that represent concepts of women, along with how men respond to women’s writing if they condone it or not. To portray those contentions the author uses stories of women referencing Jane Harrison, Sylvia Plath, Diane Wakoski, Virginia Woolf, Sappho, Christina Rossetti, Emily Dickinson, Elinor Wylie, Edna Millay, and so many more encapsulating the voice of female writers.

  Overall, this is an effective method and or argument source. It gives relevant arguments and contentions on women writers while it may also be a method in evaluating thus making it a working argument source. While it could be used as a method to establish links of demographic backgrounds to the work of authors which is the main use of this source in the essay.

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, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24372861. Accessed 3 Dec. 2023. 

• The journal “Space as the Representation of Cultural Conflict and Gender Relations in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s ‘The Thing Around Your Neck'” explores how physical and metaphorical spaces in Adichie’s collection of short stories illuminate the complex interplay of cultural conflict and gender relations in Nigeria. It analyzes how the settings within the narratives reflect the power dynamics and social hierarchies that shape the lives of the characters, particularly women, and how these spaces serve as a backdrop for examining issues of identity, belonging, and resistance. The article underscores Adichie’s skill in using spatial representations as a lens to critique and challenge prevailing norms, shedding light on the nuanced experiences of individuals navigating the intersection of culture and gender in contemporary Nigerian society. 

Taormina, Robert J., and Jennifer H. Gao. “Maslow and the Motivation Hierarchy: Measuring Satisfaction of the Needs.” The American Journal of Psychology, vol. 126, no. 2, 2013, pp. 155–77. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.5406/amerjpsyc.126.2.0155. Accessed 27 Nov. 2023. 

• Maslow and the Motivation Hierarchy: Measuring Satisfaction of the Needs by Robert J. Taormina and Jennifer H. Gao defines the five needs in the Motivational hierarchy as physiological, safety-security, belongingness, self-esteem, and self-actualization. It opens the article representing critiques of the Maslow’s motivation hierarchy and potential biases. In order to see the tone of the study it defines each of the needs by explicit definitions. It explains previous studies on the subject of Maslow’s hierarchy. The article spends the majority of the text explaining correlations and findings within the study which simple correlations being made of a lower need being met and in turn a higher need statistically being met too as a correlation. Confirming this hierarchy. It then goes in depth on other correlations such as family emotional supports influence on the satisfaction of the five hierarchical needs, or the correlation of abiding by traditional values equates to more satisfied needs.

  This is a method source usually would be associated with a psychological critique or lens.

“The Thing around Your Neck: The Thing around Your Neck Summary & Analysis.” LitCharts, www.litcharts.com/lit/the-thing-around-your-neck/the-thing-around-your-neck. Accessed 5 Dec. 2023. 

• This source goes over “The Thing Around Your Neck”. It breaks down how the story delves into the lives of Nigerians, both in their homeland and in the United States, exploring themes of identity, displacement, cultural conflict, and gender relations. Each story offers a glimpse into the complexities of Nigerian society and the challenges faced by its people, particularly women, as they grapple with the intersection of tradition and modernity. It goes over Adichie’s vivid storytelling and rich character development providing a poignant and thought-provoking examination of the human experience, offering readers a nuanced perspective on the intricacies of cultural adaptation, migration, and the search for a sense of belonging in a globalized world.