DIASPORIC DYSPHORIA: POWER DYNAMICS IN “THE THING AROUND YOUR NECK”

Rose Parham

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2009 short story, “The Thing Around Your Neck” follows the struggles of a young woman named Akunna who immigrates from Nigeria to the United States and attempts to obtain the prosperity that she believed would flow freely there. The story’s narration is told by way of a close second-person perspective; this bold method of storytelling allows the reader to experience Akunna’s struggles as if they were in her place, deepening the emotional connection felt by the reader towards the narrator. Through a close analysis of the power dynamics present in this story, as well as the struggles experienced by the narrator as she struggles with poverty and a malfunctioning collision of cultures, a provocative view of modern society and classism can be seen.

Adichie was born in 1977 in Enugu, Nigeria (Luebering), shortly after the end of the Nigerian Civil War. Her father served for the cessative state Biafra, as did several other family members (MacFarquhar); shortly after the Republic of Biafra was dissolved, it was discovered that Adichie’s grandfathers, both on her mother’s side and her father’s side, had been killed in the war (Reed). This close personal connection to her culture’s history have been a great influence on Adichie’s writing. This is most obvious in her 2006 novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, a tribute to her grandfathers and a narrative that spans the years before and after the Nigerian Civil War; for this work she received international acclaim as well as the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction (Reynolds). Though less apparent, the influence of Nigeria’s tumultuous state can also be seen in “The Thing Around Your Neck”, both in its grim depiction of Akunna’s home country and also in her determination to stay in the United States despite the challenges she experiences of being an immigrant, Adichie commented, “In some ways, I don’t see myself as an immigrant…I suppose [in America], I’m Nigerian; in Nigeria, I’m American” (Nawotka). Despite spending much of her life in the United States or the United Kingdom, she feels as though she is forever in-between worlds, exposing the inability of host countries to fully accept immigrant grafts.

In Marxist criticism, literature is generally viewed as a product of the environment in which it was created, with emphasis on the presence of power dynamics, whether real or representative, as well as economic classes. Though likely intended as a realistic, objective depiction of the life of an immigrant to the U.S., Adichie’s “The Thing Around Your Neck” in some ways reinforces the classist structures present in society, with the narrator’s seemingly unavoidable and automatic shuffle into a lower class based solely on being an immigrant.

Evidence of society’s power dynamics, which are particularly pronounced in the experience of immigrants, can be seen in Akunna’s story as she navigates a social clash and struggles to assimilate. In a depressing portrayal of the exploitation of immigrant workers, Akunna is forced to drop out of college to make rent, and her boss says that “all immigrants work hard” (Adichie 3), paying her a dollar less than the other staff. Additionally, she is paid under-the-table to avoid taxes, symbolizing the struggles imposed on the working class.

Akunna longs to write to her family and relay everything she has observed since coming to the United States, that people in America are “surprisingly open” and tell their personal business without provocation (Adichie 3) and about the rampant food waste and how the “poor people [are] fat and the rich people [are] thin” (Adichie 4), but due to shame that she is unable to afford the gifts that she had planned to send back home to her family, she instead resignedly sends money to them without even a note (Adichie 4).

Though she had been told that after a month in America, she would have a big house and a big car (Adichie 1), she is barely able to afford the necessities. Society has failed to help her succeed, just as her uncle has failed her; he attempts to sexually exploit her in exchange for money, a place to stay, and professional connections (Adichie 2), and she must sever her last tie in the United States to her home and is left utterly alone. Akunna lacks power at her job and in her relationship with her uncle, just as she lacks a voice in society as a whole.

Even when she begins a romantic relationship with a local college student, where there should be a feeling of comfort and safety, is instead only more tension. They consummate their relationship, and she bites her lip to stay silent (Adichie 6), just as she must stay silent despite the injustices she faces in society. Marxist theory suggests that capitalist societies are ones full of turmoil between the industrial working class and the upper capitalist class, and the insurmountable gap that lies between Akunna and her boyfriend can be seen as representative of the gap between classes, with Akunna playing the part of the proletariat and her boyfriend the bourgeoisie. She attempts to cook traditional dishes for him and share her culture, but his body literally rejects it; his vomiting into her kitchen sink serving as a reminder of their incompatibility (Adichie 7). Contrastingly, she is unable to understand his consumerist mindset when he buys her gifts, stating that apparently “in his life, he could buy presents that were just presents and nothing else” (Adichie 7). Much like how the privileged in society can ignore the presence of classism in the United States, Akunna and her boyfriend argue, then reconcile sexually—yet the tension remains there under the surface. She battles a need to assimilate and reach for success in the United States and a conflicting desire to preserve the culture from which she originated from, but just as the cultural divide in her relationship with her boyfriend seems too wide to cross, the societal collision also seems impossible to reconcile.

The repetition of something tightening around her neck throughout the story represents the heavy weight she feels as economic struggles and societal expectations close in. When her ties to her family in the United States must be severed after her uncle molests her, she feels it close in around her neck. In the white towns she lives in, she is marked as being different because she is a black immigrant; when she goes out with her boyfriend, people have difficulty believing that they go together, which bothers her greatly (Adichie 6). When she learns that her father has passed away while she was in the United States and her family was unable to notify her about it until months later (Adichie 8), the titular noose again threatens to tighten around her neck and suffocate her under the weight of economic struggles which she can never climb out from underneath.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “The Thing Around Your Neck” does not directly challenge the societal norms nor does it reinforce capitalist ideologies; the narrator character Akunna is merely trying to survive, taking the challenges as they come and working around them. However, this approach by Adichie offers the reader an objective view of the experience of an immigrant to the United States in modern society and stimulates empathy for Akunna’s struggles and disgust for the conditions she lives and works in, though it otherwise does not directly comment or criticize. It is in this quiet reflection where readers are allowed to come to their own conclusions that Adichie’s literary genius can be seen: emotional, close, and realistic depictions of the struggles she herself has encountered and the complexity of navigating society as an immigrant.

Works Cited

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. “The Thing Around Your Neck.” Prospect Magazine, https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/books-and-literature/fiction/59001/the-thing-around-your-neck. Accessed 9 May 2024.

Luebering, J.E.. “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 30 Apr. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Chimamanda-Ngozi-Adichie. Accessed 9 May 2024.

MacFarquhar, Larissa. “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Comes to Terms with Global Fame”. The New Yorker, 28 May 2018. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/06/04/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-comes-to-terms-with-global-fame. Accessed 9 May 2024.

Reed, Betsy. “Truth and Lies”. The Guardian, 15 Sep. 2006. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/sep/16/fiction.society. Accessed 9 May 2024.

Reynolds, Nigel. “Nigerian Author Wins Top Literary Prize”. The Telegraph, 7 June 2007. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1553821/Nigerian-author-wins-top-literary-prize.html. Accessed 9 May 2024.

Nawotka, Edward. “Interview with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of ‘The Thing Around Your Neck’”. Austin-American Statesman, 22 Sep. 2012. https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2012/09/22/interview-with-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-author-of-the-thing-around-your-neck/9805695007/