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You in America
First published January 1, 2006
About the author
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
117 books41.7k followersChimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in Nigeria.
Her work has been translated into over thirty languages and has appeared in various publications, including The New Yorker, Granta, The O. Henry Prize Stories, the Financial Times, and Zoetrope. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; Half of a Yellow Sun, which won the Orange Prize and was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist and a New York Times Notable Book; and Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named one of The New York Times Top Ten Best Books of 2013. Ms. Adichie is also the author of the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck.
Ms. Adichie has been invited to speak around the world. Her 2009 TED Talk, The Danger of A Single Story, is now one of the most-viewed TED Talks of all time. Her 2012 talk We Should All Be Feminists has a started a worldwide conversation about feminism, and was published as a book in 2014.
Her most recent book, Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, was published in March 2017.
A recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, Ms. Adichie divides her time between the United States and Nigeria.
Her work has been translated into over thirty languages and has appeared in various publications, including The New Yorker, Granta, The O. Henry Prize Stories, the Financial Times, and Zoetrope. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; Half of a Yellow Sun, which won the Orange Prize and was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist and a New York Times Notable Book; and Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named one of The New York Times Top Ten Best Books of 2013. Ms. Adichie is also the author of the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck.
Ms. Adichie has been invited to speak around the world. Her 2009 TED Talk, The Danger of A Single Story, is now one of the most-viewed TED Talks of all time. Her 2012 talk We Should All Be Feminists has a started a worldwide conversation about feminism, and was published as a book in 2014.
Her most recent book, Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, was published in March 2017.
A recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, Ms. Adichie divides her time between the United States and Nigeria.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 8, 2018
You knew by people's reactions that you were abnormal—the way the nasty ones were too nasty and the nice ones too nice. The old white women who muttered and glared at him, the black men who shook their heads at you, the black women whose pitiful eyes bemoaned your lack of self-esteem, your self-loathing. Or the black women who smiled swift, secret solidarity smiles, the black men who tried too hard to forgive you, saying a too-obvious hi to him, the white women who said, "what a good looking pair," too brightly, too loudly, as though to prove their own tolerance to themselves.
Incredible work. Adichie speaks universal truths and she does it so beautifully.
Incredible work. Adichie speaks universal truths and she does it so beautifully.
September 28, 2022
I was checking my to-read list and this one had been there for over 10+years. That's crazy, because I have read this one before. It's a short story included in Chimamanda's compilation book called "The thing around your neck" which is named after this story. Still, I reread it because I just read something horrible and needed to cleanse my palate, and because Adichie is wonderful.
"At nights, something wrapped itself around your neck, something that very nearly always choked you before you woke up.
...
The thing that wrapped itself around your neck, that nearly always choked you before you fell asleep, started to loosen, to let go."
I read it here:
https://web.archive.org/web/200202280...
"At nights, something wrapped itself around your neck, something that very nearly always choked you before you woke up.
...
The thing that wrapped itself around your neck, that nearly always choked you before you fell asleep, started to loosen, to let go."
I read it here:
https://web.archive.org/web/200202280...
March 30, 2018
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s unique short story is a superb dissection of race in the USA. There are some novels that tell a great story and others that make you change the way you look at the world. This short story manages to do both.
It tells the story of you in America, really. With this typical way of writing, Adichie lets you be the story’s narrator. Therefore you get an excellent feeling on how it would feel to migrate to America as a young Nigerian girl. Not one prejudice is left out. Everyone’s knowledge is broadened by this truly gripping human story.
It tells the story of you in America, really. With this typical way of writing, Adichie lets you be the story’s narrator. Therefore you get an excellent feeling on how it would feel to migrate to America as a young Nigerian girl. Not one prejudice is left out. Everyone’s knowledge is broadened by this truly gripping human story.
December 1, 2018
Short story about race in America and the life of the immigrant, it feels like a beginning of ideas and threads which became Americanah but I am not sure how accurate that is, it just has that vibe.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews