The Thing Around Your Neck

Families and their internal structures are repeatedly deconstructed within the stories of The Thing Around Your Neck. The expectations of family, traditional roles within the family, and clashes with American or otherwise foreign ideas of family all recur throughout the stories. In “Imitation,” Nkem marries Obiora to provide for the family as first daughter, which she perceives as her role. Their marriage is complicated by their disparity of wealth, and Nkem’s eventual disclosure of her desire to move back to Nigeria is a change in the established and expected dynamic. Marriage too plays a role in Chinaza’s relationship to family in “The Arrangers of Marriage.” Her marriage to David is strained, but even beyond that, she is frustrated with her aunt and uncle who arranged the marriage for her without warning her what the realities of it would be.

There is also culture clash at work to complicate family relationships. Kamara in “On Monday of Last Week” finds the dictates of the white American father she works for, Neil, to be ridiculous. She feels “a pitying affection for Neil” even as his micromanaging and nervousness are annoying to Kamara (71). The feelings she develops for Tracy, Neil’s wife, and the affection their son feels for Kamara further muddies the family relationships.