This summer, English II students at Sage Hill School read a selection of short stories from Chimamanda Adichie's collection The Thing Around Your Neck. The first story we read was called "The Headstrong Historian" and is set in the late 19th century during Nigeria's colonization by the Europeans. As a descendant of colonized people, Adichie is inherently interested in ideas related to knowledge, power and subjugation. We see this when, in "The Headstrong Historian", Ayaju, a woman of slave descent, states that she wants her son to "learn the ways of these foreigners, since people ruled over others not because they were better people but because they had better guns...." In today's class we also discussed three other Adichie stories, "A Private Experience", "The Thing Around Your Neck", and "American Embassy". In all of these stories, as well, characters grapple with how outsiders (the media, politicians and governments, etc.) can try and manipulate real events that happen to real people for their own profit or gain. From these stories and, as shown in the quote above, Adichie is incredibly interested in storytelling and who gets to tell those stories.
For this week's blog post, I want you to reflect on Adichie's quote above as well as our discussion of the three short stories mentioned previously. How has your experiences in the short time we've been in this class already begun to change and shape your understanding of power, privilege and who gets to tell the stories?
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