The Thing Around Your Neck is a collection of twelve stories about Nigerians living in Nigeria and America. Adichie's characters face a range of challenges across time periods spanning three centuries. These challenges include war, government corruption, arranged marriage, immigrating to America, coming of age, family trauma, discrimination, exploitation, and loss of loved ones. But a theme that is common to all of the stories' protagonists is a fierce commitment to a sense of self and the preservation of one's own authentic voice.
Several of the stories draw on Adichie's own experience of immigrating to the U.S., many pay special attention to the female experience of migration, and,...
