Literary Cosmopolitanism in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's The Thing Around Your Neck: The Hyphenated-American or the Critic of Pervasive Authorization

The first and foremost condition of a postcolonial writer is to present an objective view of any colonial experience without indulging in pseudo-nationalism or what Edward Said calls a “rhetoric of blame.” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s careful representation of characters and events both in Nigeria and America is not only unbiased and objective but also depicts the exiled state of their existence. As a writer striving to achieve cosmopolitanism in her works, she reflects upon issues related to race, ethnicity, gender and migrant identity. Her collection of short stories, The Thing Around Your Neck, is a collusion and collision of cultural and ethnic marginality with the pre-established norms of the cultural “West” for those trying to establish what Rushdie claims to be an “imaginary homeland”. Her characters that embrace nationalism in the newly developing Nigeria are equally dichotomized between their support of the ‘government’ and ‘development’ of the nation as well as its economy and their fear of the pervasive authorization. The unheard voices are inside their heads, that rebel against the established order sustaining both worlds. The paper aims to detail the ‘adaptation’ process of the migrant Nigerian while trying to assimilate the traditional values along with other issues.