Jumia Books The Thing Around Your Neck Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Fiction

Kamene Okonjo presents a feminist reading of ‘The Headstrong Historian,’ which says that Adichie establishes the historicity of her narrative by invoking Achebe’s colonial context and representing the Igbo dual-sex system.[17] In Women in Africa, Okonjo details how dual-sex systems in pre-colonial Igboland gave women greater authority than the Western single-sex system.[18] Research works by Nkiru Nzegwu and Ifi Amadiume also discuss Igbo women’s collective agency.[19][20] In "The Headstrong Historian", Nwamgba receives support from the Women's Council when her late husband's cousins steal his property and, as a result, several women "sit on" the cousins.[21] One criticism of Achebe's Things Fall Apart focuses on the representation of women as powerless in the Igbo tribal system, beyond conducting marriage ceremonies.[22] Judith Van Allen notes that early ethnographic studies of Igbo communities comment on the 1929 Women's War in southeastern Nigeria, a protest that saw Igbo women challenge the policies of the colonial government.[23] Rhonda Cobham's feminist reading says that while Achebe mentions the Women's Council, he does not establish its civic agency, which saw women intervene in community disputes by "sitting on" men, thereby publicly shaming them.[24] Cobhman says that Adichie locates Nwamgba's protests to the Women's Council in a historical context that counters Achebe's representation of oppressed Igbo women.