The Thing Around Your Neck, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at the Wikipedia

The Thing Around Your Neck at the Wikipedia

The Thing Around Your Neck: summary and analysis, LitCharts

Chimamanda website

Chimamanda independent website

Nigeria at the Wikipedia

Biafra at the Wikipedia

Tedx talk: We should all be feminists (very easy to understand and very funny)

Half of a Yellow Sun (trailer)

Presentation, by Adriana Cruz

BIOGRAPHY

Chiamamanda Ngozi Adichie is a famous writer, teacher, novelist, playwright and feminist activist.
She was born in Agba village, Enugu (Nigeria) on the15th September, 1977. She grew up as the fifth of six children in Nsukka city. 
Her father, James Nwoye Adichie worked as a professor of statistics, and her mother, Grace Ifeoma was the first secretary of the University of Nigeria.
The family lost almost everything during the Nigerian Civil War, including both maternal and paternal grandfathers. Her family's ancestral village is in Abba in Anambra State, Nigeria.
She studied Medicine and Pharmacy at the University of Nigeria for a year and a half. During this period, she edited The Compass, a magazine run by the Catholic University's medical students. At the age of 19, Adichie left Nigeria for the United States to study Communications and Political Science at Drexel University in Philadelphia. She soon transferred to Eastern Connecticut State University to be near her sister Uche, who had a medical practice in Coventry, Connecticut.
 She got married to Ivara Esege, and they have one child.
From 2016 to 2019 he won several honorary titles as the Doctor of Humane Letters and the Doctor Honoris Causa, from the Université de Fribourg, Switzerland.
She was the author of many novels: Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun, Americanah, the short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck (translated into 19 languages), and the essay We Should All Be Feminists. Her most recent books are Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions and Notes on Grief.
Adichie divides her time between the United States and her second residence in Nigeria, where she teaches writing workshops.

 The Thing Around Your Neck

This book was first published in 2009, and talks about a woman named Akunna who gains a sought-after American visa and goes to live with her uncle; but he molests her, and she ends up working as a waitress in Connecticut. She ends up meeting a man whom she falls in love with, but, along the way, she experiences cultural difficulties with him.
The title story depicts the choking loneliness of a Nigerian girl who moves to an America that turns out to be nothing like the country she expected. Although falling in love brings her desires nearly within reach, a death in her homeland forces her to re-examine them.
The history based in Lagos and USA, and deals about prejudices and difficulties in accepting the pre-established cultural differences and prejudice of sex, ethnicity, macho and white dominant culture, and many difficulties to get a visa.

QUESTIONS

According to the family, what things do you have to get when you are in the USA, and what you don’t?

Personal question: What things do you usually buy as souvenirs when you go away?
They call “America” the USA. Is that correct?

Where is Maine? What kind of place is (or was) it? And Connecticut?
“They were desperately trying to look diverse” (where her uncle is working): What is your opinion about positive discrimination?
The story is told in the second person singular (you). Why?
In Maine they asked her about her hair: What is the best way to deal with “different” people?
Why did she leave her uncle’s house? Was he really her uncle?
How did her boss Juan treat her in her first job?
According to the protagonist, how is life back in Nigeria?
What were the brown envelopes for?
What stories did she want to tell her family about “America”?
What were the usual clichés about black people?
What things did her future boyfriend (the white costumer) know about Africa?
Why did the protagonist say white people were always “condescending” with Africa?
Talk about professor Cobbledick.
The fortune strips of paper she got in the Chinese restaurant were blank. What does it mean for the story?
Can you remember the story of her father in the raining day in Lagos?
She cooked dinner for her boyfriend: how did he like it?
What kinds of presents didn’t she like?
What do people think of them as a couple?
What behaviour and what decisions of her boyfriend didn’t she understand?
Why does she go back to Nigeria?
In your opinion, is she going to go back to the USA then?
What does the title mean?

VOCABULARY

visa, to get in one’s feet, self-tanner, gawp, Greyhound bus, community college, course syllabi, hawk, preemie, shantytown, maudlin, Jeopardy, root for, throw up, MSG, Nawal El Saadawi

Fleet-Footed Hester, by George Gissing

George Gissing at the Wikipedia: click here

George Gissing, The Guardian: click here

Fleet-Footed Hester: review

Fleet-Footed Hester: summary

George Gissing on feminism: click here

Presentation, by Argemir Gonzàlez

Biography

George Robert Gissing was born on 22nd November 1857 in Wakefield, Yorkshire. He died on 28th December 1903 in Saint-Jean-de-Luz (France). He was the eldest of five children of Thomas Waller Gissing, who ran a chemist's shop, and Margaret.

Gissing was educated at Back Lane School in Wakefield, where he was a diligent and enthusiastic student. His serious interest in books began at the age of ten when he read The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens. Gissing's father died when he was 12 years old, and he and his brothers were sent to the Lindow Grove School at Alderley Edge in Cheshire, where he was a solitary student who studied hard. In 1872, after an exceptional performance in the Oxford Local Examinations, Gissing won a scholarship to Owens College, forerunner of the University of Manchester. There he continued his intense studies, and won many prizes, including the Poem Prize in 1873 and the Shakespeare scholarship in 1875.

His academic career ended in disgrace when he ran short of money and stole from his fellow students. The college hired a detective to investigate the thefts and Gissing was prosecuted, found guilty, expelled and sentenced to a month's hard labour in Belle Vue Gaol, Manchester, in 1876.

In Manchester, he also began a relationship with Marianne "Nell" Harrison, a prostitute, afterwards his wife.

He travelled to the USA with Marianne Harrison in 1876 but lived in poverty and returned the following year then he worked as a teacher. He began to publish in 1880 but without success until 1891 when he published New Grub Street, a novel about literary bohemian life. That novel and The Odd Women are considered his best works.

His style follows the style of Dickens and Gaskell on social content. In 1898 published his study Charles Dickens: A Critical Study.

Critical review

Fleet-Footed Hester, by George Gissing, is the story of a young woman, immature and capricious, and of a not so young man, of weak character and jealous despite being physically strong.

Fleet-Footed Hester is a story, in my opinion, lineal, plain and not credible, halfway between Victorian morals and a reflection about the female condition.

The end is disappointing. The young and free Hester saves her lover John Rayner doing what she can do best (that is, running), but only to deliver herself to a jealous, impoverished, alcoholised man with whom she never will have what she likes most: running races.

The message of George Gissing is clear: the woman must sacrifice her freedom because it is the reason for the disgrace and misery of a man. 

QUESTIONS

What is Private Eye?
What is Grub Street?
 
Talk about the characters: appearance, personality, job...
John
Hester
Albert
Mrs Heffron
Hester’s father. (He was “married without leave”. What does it mean?)
 
What was John’s opinion about Hester’s first job? What kind of occupation did he want for her?
What was John’s opinion about Hester running races?
John and Hester’s different kind of love: what are these two kinds?
Tell us John and Hester first quarrel.
Tell us John and Hester second quarrel.
How did Hester change after the second quarrel?
How did John change along the two years when didn’t see Hester?
Explain Albert and Hester’s courtship and their breaking up.
Last but one Hester’s race.
Mrs Heffron and Hester’s last meeting.
What was Hester’s proposal when she met John at the station?
What does the last sentence (“the red rift of the eastern sky broadened into day”) mean? What does it symbolize?

 

THEME TO DEBATE

I think that Gissing’s story is useful to debate some topics about feminism, moreover when he wrote a novel about the situation of the women in Victorian (or puritan and traditionalist) society.

So, what do you thing about woman and hobbies (sports, DIY, etc.). Don’t you think that there is a vindication, from women, to do “men” hobbies, but not the other way round?

For the only reason of being a woman, you are discriminated? (E.g. I’m thinking about Mrs Thatcher)

What is your opinion about positive discrimination (that is: in equal conditions, to give preference to a member of a minority or to a member of an unfavoured group)?

Do you think men can /must be involved in the debate about women issues?

VOCABULARY

wiry, foreman, stay, paper-chase, woo, plight one’s troth, stinted, bearing, ploughboy, wages, wrath, pickles, fit of temper, comely, shun, lithe, thew, measure one’s length on the pavement, toss, copper, stich, bale, traps

CLERIHEWS

As you could see on the brief introduction before the story, they mention a kind of poem called clerihew. It was invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956), who was a humorous English writer. It's a comical biographical poem very easy to create.The first line has to contain the name of the person you're telling something about. It has to have four lines of any meter you like, and with the rhyme structure AABB, so they are useful to learn how to pronounce some words, though sometimes the rhymes can be forced. Here you have some exemples:

Edmund Clerihew Bentley

Sir Christopher Wren
Said, “I’m going to dine with some men.
If anyone calls,
Say I’m designing St. Paul’s.”

***

It was a weakness of Voltaire’s
To forget to say his prayers,
And one which to his shame
He never overcame.

***

Dante Alighieri
Seldom troubled a dairy.
He wrote the Inferno
On a bottle of Pernod.

***

Daniel Defoe
Lived a long time ago.
He had nothing to do, so
He wrote Robinson Crusoe.

***

Edgar Allan Poe
Was passionately fond of roe.
He always liked to chew some,
When writing something gruesome.

***

John Stuart Mill,
By a mighty effort of will,
Overcame his natural bonhomie
And wrote ‘Principles of Economy.’

***

The art of Biography
Is different from Geography.
Geography is about maps,
But Biography is about chaps.

G. K. Chesterton

The novels of Jane Austen
Are the ones to get lost in.
I wonder if Labby
Has read Northanger Abbey

(Labby was an English journalist.)

***

Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Is now a buried one.
He was not a Goth, much less a Vandal,
As he proved by writing The School for Scandal.

***

Solomon
You can scarcely write less than a column on.
His very song
Was long.

***

The Spanish people think Cervantes
Equal to half a dozen Dantes;
An opinion resented most bitterly
By the people of Italy.

W. H. Auden

Sir Henry Rider Haggard
Was completely staggered
When his bride-to-be
Announced, “I am She!”

***

John Milton
Never stayed in a Hilton
Hotel,
Which was just as well.

***

When Karl Marx
Found the phrase ‘financial sharks,’
He sang a Te Deum
In the British Museum.

***

When the young Kant
Was told to kiss his aunt,
He obeyed the Categorical Must
But only just.

***

Lord Byron
Once succumbed to a Siren:
His flesh was weak,
Hers Greek.

***

Oscar Wilde
Was greatly beguiled,
When into the Café Royal walked Bosie
Wearing a tea-cosy.

***

Thomas Hardy
Was never tardy
When summoned to fulfill
The Immanent Will.

***

William Blake
Found Newton hard to take,
And was not enormously taken
With Francis Bacon.

***

Henry Taylor

Alexander Graham Bell
has shuffled off this mobile cell.
He’s not talking any more
But he has a lot to answer for.

***

John Dryden
wasn’t the sort you’d confide in;
there was no limit to the secrets he’d tell
in lyrics set to music by Henry Purcell.

***

William Wordsworth
considered four-and-twenty birds worth
a walk as far as the banks of the Wye.
There are some things money just can’t buy. 

 George Szirtes

e e cummings’
unpublished hummings
will shortly be published in a book –
just l(oo)k

***
Rene Magritte
liked his rum neat
and would never think of adding Cola.
He’d sooner eat his bowler.

***

Pierre-August Renoir
simply adored Film Noir
and kept nagging at Jean
“Make your old dad a Film Noir! Aw, go on!”

***

Claude Monet
resisted all forms of donné.
When someone suggested he should paint the cathedral at Rheims,
he replied, “In your dreams!”

***

George Braque
decided to pickle a shark
as a kind of tableau,
but then left it to Pablo.

***

J M W Turner
liked a nice little earner
and was untroubled by greed,
painting Rain, Steam AND Speed.

Mark Granier 

Trump
was always at home on the stump,
while the White House, unfortunately,
is more of a tree.

Derek Mahon

The Picture of Dorian Gray
Is still read today;
While other Victorian novels degenerate in the attic,
Its reputation remains static.

***

“Strange Meeting”

Wilfred Owen
And Elizabeth Bowen
Never met;
And yet… 

Sex Lives of Poets by Dick Davis

Did Shakespeare get more joy
From a boy as a girl or a girl as a boy?
Whatever: he liked the nice surprises
Engendered by disguises.

***

Alexander Pope
Hadn’t a hope
With Lady Mary Wortley Montague:
“When it comes to inches,” she said, “you certainly want a few.”

***

When it comes to Christina Rossetti
And a sex life  . . . well, not to get petty
There wasn’t any, or at least none that was visible.
This clerihew’s sad, not risible.

Michael Curl

There’s no disputin’
that Grigori Rasputin
had more will to power
than Schopenhauer.

Dean W. Zimmerman

Jesus Christ
Was sliced and diced,
And punched with holes
To save our souls.

Paul Ingram

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Hardly ever went out to dine.
Be the menu never so abundant,
He found “green leafy lettuce salad” tautological and redundant.

Paul Horgan

Luchino Visconti
Saw ‘The Full Monty’
Which he thought was vile,
Bar Robert Carlyle.

Ian Duhig

 ‘Ingmar’,
said his wife, ‘I wish you would sing more,
not just sit there playing chess against Death and being glum’.
But Ingmar kept shtum.

Katy Evans-Bush

Cary Grant
loved his aunt.
When he was alone,
He would try her eau de cologne.

The Ring, by Isak Dinesen

Karen Blixen: http://www.karenblixen.com/

Isak Dinesen was the pseudonym of Karen Blixen. Most people remember her because she was the heroine of Out of Africa, but Karen's life and character have very little to do with the role acted by Meryl Streep.

The Danish author Karen Blixen (1885) belonged to an aristocratic family. She was grown up by some aunts obsessed by being nobles. She fell in love with a distant cousin of hers, but he rejected her and then she got married to his twin brother, a baron, with whom she sent to Kenya. The marriage was a disaster, and he transmitted the syphilis to her. He was also very bad at bussines, and she had to take care of their coffee plantation. At last, they went bankrupt, and she came back to Denmark, where she started to write.

Hemingway said she deserved the Nobel Prize more than himself.

Another very famous work of hers is Babette's Feast, also adapted to a film.

TRY TO ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS WHILE YOU READ

Was theirs a balanced marriage?

How do we know that they were happy?

What was the difference of character between them?

Where did they go in a lovely July morning?

Why does she think "What a baby he is! I'm a hundred years older than he?"

What happened to some of the English lambs?

What crimes did the thief commit?

What were Lise's feelings about the thief?

Why was she happy when she was alone?

Why did she go into the shrubbery?

Who did she find in the shelter?

What did the man do with the knife? What does it symbolize?

She dropped her handkerchief: What is the meaning of that? And of giving her ring?

And why did he kick the ring away?

What do you thing is the meaning of "the blade was much worn - it went in?

Why does she think "All is over"?

Was she in love with her husband? How do you know?

 

 

WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS: TRY TO LOOK THEM UP

aka

had set on their purpose for ten years 

haughty

jesting

raillery

no stone in his bride's path

haymaking

drifted

frock

ram

stock

sheepfold

gruesome

whimper

shrank

swallows

gambolling

moist

took him in one simple glance

alcove

at bay

asunder

TOPICS TO DISCUSS

Why do some women take a male pseudonym to write?

What do you think of positive discrimination?

What is for you the difference between sex and genre?

SAYINGS, IDEAS AND OTHER THOUGHTS BY ISAK DINESEN

The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.

It is a good thing to be a great sinner. Or should human beings allow Christ to have died on the Cross for the sake of our petty lies and our paltry whorings. 

All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them. 

All the sorrows of life are bearable if only

we can convert them into a story. 

Truth, like time, is an idea arising from, and dependent upon, human intercourse. 

People work much in order to secure the future; I gave my mind much work and trouble, trying to secure the past. 

If a man can devote himself undisturbed to the work which is on his mind, he can, as far I have observed, completely ignore his surroundings--they disappear for him; he can sit in filth and disorder, draught and cold, and be completely happy. For most women it is insufferable to sit in a room if the color scheme displeases them. 

From my journeys in southern Europe I have gained the impression that in our time the Virgin Mary is the only heavenly creature who is really beloved by millions. But I believe these millions would be uncomprehending and perhaps even offended if I were to tell them that the Virgin Mary had made a significant discovery, solved difficult mathematical problems, or masterfully organized and administered an association of housewives in Nazareth.

 

Desirée's Baby, by Kate Chopin

Kate Chopin at the Wikipedia

Kate Chopin was an American writer of short stories, although her most famous work was the novel The Awakening (1899). This novel was banished because it was too adavanced for her time: the critics couldn't bear the feminist behaviour of her characters nor her treatment of the female sexuality or infidelity (remember she lived in the South of the USA, where they say people are more tradicionalist and can (or could) speak French). So most of people considered her writings offensive and they were forgotten until in the 1970s, when she was rediscovered for this feminist attitude, and, from then on, her novel and short stories have been republished several times.

Chopin had a hard life because of the successive loss of her husband, her business, and her mother. A friend of Chopin's, a doctor, suggested her to start writing, believing that it could be a good thereapy for her, and thus also to give way to her enormous energy.

Her short stories follow the topics and the style of the French writer Guy de Maupassant. He was a realistic or naturalistic writer, a bit pessimistic and with a good taste for life ironies.

More short stories by Kate Chopin (I recommend to read them: they're very short!):

The Storm

The Story of an Hour 

Kate Chopin at the Library: here! 

SOME QUESTIONS TO HELP YOU WITH THE READING:

At the beginning of the story, what do we know about the heroine?

How was the girl like?

Why did Madame Valmonde want the girl?

What was the way for all the Aubignys to fall in love?

Who was Armand?

What did L'Abri look like?

What does "cochon du lait" mean?

What was Desirée's baby like?

How do you know Armand was happy with the baby?

What signs foretold the disaster?

So, at the end, who was the person with black blood in their veins?

SOME VOCABULARY

toddling age = age when children start to walk

stray = wander and get lost

child of the flesh = child of one's own, not adopted

corbeille = bouquet of flowers

scamp = lazy and mischievous

layette = set of clothes for a newborn

 

 plantation

 

 

 

 

  stubble

 cabin

fan (verb)

reeds

willow