The Thing Around Your Neck: Introduction
Welcome to this unit of study on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck. Adichie is on the Prescribed Reading List (PRL), and this is a beautifully written and powerful collection of stories which students find engaging and rich for exploration. This unit has been written specifically with your IB students in mind, and addresses the areas of exploration, the concepts, global issues and the requirements of IB examinations. Each page focusses on a different story and includes before, during, and after reading sections, although you may prefer students to read each story first before engaging in any activities. As ever with our resources, this unit it is not intended to be prescriptive and of course you may supplement our materials with others, and you may select from and modify them to meet your own requirements. In addition, it is important that you read the stories and any materials we publish to ensure that they are appropriate to your own local context. We hope that you and your students enjoy working with this unit.
Introduction: Watching The Danger of a Single Story
Before embarking on the short story collection you may want to show your students Adichie's talk, ’The Danger of a Single Story’. You can find the text below. It is accompanied by a number of suggested questions for discussion.
For Students: After Watching
Having watched the 'The danger of a single story’, respond to the following questions in your learner portfolio or wherever you keep notes. Then, discuss your ideas with another student.
- What does Adichie mean by the phrase 'the danger of a single story'?
- Can you think of examples where your perception of other people’s identities has been shaped by literature or film or music?
- How does Adichie connect her experience with reading fictional stories to the ‘stories’ we tell ourselves about others in real life?
- When you/if you write a story, what influences you? Do you imitate the stories you have been exposed to?
- What is the ‘story’ you have of Africa? Where does this come from?
- Are there people and/or places you have what Chinua Achebe calls a “balance of stories” about? Who/what are these and where does this "balance" come from?
- Are there people or places you have a “single story” about? Where do these "single stories" come from?
- How could you challenge these "single stories"?
- Is there an example of when your identity has been shaped or affronted by a story you have encountered?
Now, Read On…
Cell One
’Cell One’ is the first story in the Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck. ‘Cell One’ is told from the perspective of a young Nigerian girl whose brother...
Jumping Monkey Hill
'Jumping Monkey Hill' follows the journey of Ujunwa, a young Nigerian woman who attends a writers' workshop at Jumping Monkey Hill, a resort in South Africa. The workshop is facilitated by a well-known...
The Thing Around Your Neck
The title story from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's short story collection, The Thing Around Your Neck, follows a young Nigerian woman, Akunna, who moves to the United States and grapples with the complexities...
A Private Experience
'A Private Experience' depicts an encounter between two women - a Christian Igbo woman and a Muslim Hausa woman - who seek refuge in an abandoned shop during a violent riot in Kano, Nigeria. The story...
The Headstrong Historian
'The Headstrong Historian' is the final story in the collection, The Thing Around Your Neck, and it deals with many of the issues and themes that have been important in the preceding stories. It is not...
Imitation
‘Imitation’ is a story about Nkem, a Nigerian woman living in an affluent Philadelphia suburb, whose husband remains in Nigeria most of the year, visiting only occasionally. Nkem's life is defined...