Nigerian and American culture contrasted in "The Thing Around Your Neck"

        In the short story collection, The Thing Around Your Neck, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Nigerian culture is contrasted with American culture. The author, an American who grew up in a Nigerian University, has experienced the differences between Nigerian and American culture firsthand. 

  In the short story Imitation, the main character, Nkem, and her maid Amaechi try to retain their Nigerian traditions while assimilating into American culture. They discuss the best American brands, Uncle Ben’s or basmati, for their jollof rice. Nkem sees a difference between American children and Nigerian children. She comments on how American children won’t eat something if it is slightly spoiled but back in Nigeria, children will eat any food they find. She also notices how “American children talk to elders as if they were their equals” (34). In the story, On Monday of Last Week, Kamara, who is Nigerian, takes care of an American boy. Kamara does not understand the father’s obsessive worry for his son and his son’s health. When the father, Neil, talks about the mother, Tracy, Kamara does not understand why she stays in the basement. She wonders “if there was something distinctly American she was supposed to understand from what he had said” (78). In The Arrangers of Marriage, a woman comes to America for the first time to meet her new husband, a doctor in America. First, she is disappointed with the house, it is a small apartment with barely any furniture. She is also saddened when her new husband gives up his Nigerian name and calls himself Dave and makes her do the same and call herself Agatha. Her husband also stops her from cooking Nigerian foods because he does not want to be known as the people whose apartment smells of foreign food. 

  These stories all talk about Nigerians trying to keep their cultural traditions while learning about American culture. The author is commenting on how important culture is for people. Cultural traditions bring people together and assimilation into a new culture is hard. The author is talking about how culture is special and Nigerian culture, while it is distinctly different from American, is special in its own ways for its people.