(Re)Examination of The American Dream in selected short stories from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Short Story Collection The Thing Around Your Neck

Abstract

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck (2009) explores a tapestry of themes, while the American Dream (and/or the American Nightmare) from the perspective of (transnational) migrant Nigerian women stands out as a prominent one. This paper has a twofold aim: to explore the representation of the American Dream in a transnational context and text of three distinct short stories from this collection, namely “Imitation”, “The Thing Around Your Neck”, and “The Arrangers of Marriage”, and to observe the voice of (trans)migrant women in relation to the American Dream and American Nightmare.