"The Thing Around Your Neck"

One of the perks of being a former book reviewer for a Gannett newspaper is that the publicists for various publishing houses continue to send you copies of books that they are hoping you will, in one form or another, write about (who knows, perhaps even blog about).

Although I no longer write about books professionally, I still talk about them a lot in my classroom at NYU, particularly the ones that are well written and that, in one way or another, relate to topics that fall under the obscure heading of "American Cultural Mythology," the subject matter of my second semester writing course.

So, how does a book of short stories about the struggles of Nigerians immigrating to the United States, or living in current day Nigeria, fit in? "The Thing Around Your Neck," by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, fits in because the "thing" is not a thing at all, it is a feeling of loneliness and isolation that happens when you are a stranger anywhere, at any time, in your own country. A line like, "You wanted to write that rich Americans were thin and poor Americans were fat," says more about our culture, and more about writing, than ten introductions to ten different text books.

And if you want to appreciate just how different our lives are, yet how utterly the same, from most of the rest of the world's population then I recommend reading this book, that came to me through the strange workings of the publishing universe.

Frank McCourt, my much beloved high school writing teacher used to say, referring to our student pieces, " A piece of writing should nourish you. With this writing I will die of malnourishment of the soul." This book will keep you well fed.