EXAMINING THE DIASPORA EXPERIENCE IN SELECTED STORIES IN CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE’S THE THING AROUND YOUR NECK

Abstract

This paper examines diaspora and the impact on various characters
in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s short story collection The Thing
Around Your Neck. The specific short stories for interface are:
“Imitation”, “On Monday Last Week”, “The Thing Around Your
Neck” and “Arrangers of Marriage”. These stories show the life of
Nigerians living in the diaspora, bringing out the trouble and
difficulties at home that drive these citizens to hope and believe that
salvation and relief from the trouble in the home country lies in a
foreign and strange land. This paper will examine these stories
through the lens of the postcolonial literary theory to bring out the
issues of homelessness that diaspora citizens face in the new country,
hybridity, mimicry, and the ambivalence that comes with the
interaction of a new culture in position of power. In examining
these stories, this research finds that Adichie criticises mimicry,
while showing hybridity as inevitable