For the past few months, I have been working my way through the collection of short stories in “The Thing Around Your Neck” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I was originally drawn to this book as I prepared for the Daraja Academy Service trip and although the book is based upon Nigerian culture, I wondered if there were any connections between Kenyan and Nigerian culture.

One story in particular has left me with some thoughts – “The Arrangers of Marriage“, a story regarding a couple from Nigeria who had an arranged marriage and moved to New York City (Story 10).

The main theme which resonates with me is the complex tug of war between maintaining our own culture and integrating into a new culture. It raises some important questions that we attempt to address when exploring the influence of culture on our behaviour:

• What happens to our cultural identity when we interact with other cultures?

• Do we reject our own culture to accept a new identity?

• What do we do when those around us adapt to a new culture quicker than ourselves?

• How do we maintain our own cultural identity and integrate with a new culture successfully?

These questions have helped me to make connections to the following:

IB Psychology 

This story is an excellent portrayal of a concept we study in IB Psychology called Acculturation. This is the process whereby we interact with another culture’s norms and following this contact, we begin to adopt these norms. This process is complicated and fuelled with personal and generational influences which are explored in the story.

What I find profound is Adichie’s ability to provide a penetrating lens that examines simple daily acts such as preparing and eating food in relation to our cultural identity. She equips the reader with a clear experience of what it can feel like to deal with the complex relationship of maintaining our own culture which competes with attempting to adopt a new set of cultural norms.

I was inspired by Melanie Wilson’s book review to therefore consider using this as a text within our class to explore the concept of Acculturation beyond psychological research by using scaffolding reading:

• Read extract on  page 167  to page 186 which explores the daily routines of Chinaza’s move from Nigeria to America.

Here, an activity could be introduced to help students apply Berry, et al (2006) modes of Acculturation (Integration, Assimilation, Separation and Marginalisation) to when they can draw on examples from the text as evidence of these modes. For example, on page 179 where the character Chinaza expresses her fear of not being able to cook her own food in case it smells out the halls of their apartment block as explained by her husband, can be seen as an example of separation from one’s current culture and failure to accept the new social norm.

Food, Nutrition and Mental Health

I have recently been trying to learn more about nutrition and mental health. This role of food in determining our cultural reminded me of a post by Kimberley Wilson, (@FoodandPsych) a chartered Psychologist and NHS Mental Health Trust Governor. Her post documents the importance of hearing and sharing food stories in order to combat stereotypes regarding cultures and focus instead on “curiosity”. I love that like Adichie, she has taken a universal behaviour as a tool to break down barriers to help us to understand the interactions between cultures.

In particular, I can see that this may be useful for students planning activities within Initiative for Peace. I recently have had a number of discussions with some of my Psychology students who are preparing for the IFP conference to look at ways of creating interactive activities to understand how stereotypes develop and what can be done to challenge them. Maybe food is a common place to start? It seems that an exploration of this has already begun by Anna Rosling Ronnlund who invented Dollar Street, a website of global data that uses visual imagery to represent the everyday lives of individuals in many sub-categories. Whilst the project has received criticism for its approach to document income disparity, there are alternative ways in which the visual images can be used. For me, I enjoy  how the visual photographs represent the common behaviours of humans.

Daraja Academy

I have also enjoyed the collection of short stories, and can partly see the goal of a Daraja ibook taking presence in this way. The ibook has been an project that both our High School and Middle School GC students have attempted to work towards to create an information brochure to detail what Daraja Academy is about, the campus, their mission, the four pillars etc.

Our students have worked hard to collate data, information and photographs for this – but sometimes have found the preparation for this formulaic and challenging due to the substantial similarities to the purpose of our Daraja blog.

I wonder if this book can inspire something similar for our GC to see the ibook as a collection of short stories that feature the lives of the girls in Daraja. If there is one thing that our GC students have found inspiring in building a connection between our communities is through the pen pal initiative that we have set up, then maybe a collection of short stories may be one way we can extend this personal connection to our wider community – to those who do not get the opportunity to visit Daraja or are not in the GC group.

References:

Berry, J.W., Phinney, J.S., Sam, D.L., and Vedder, P. 2006. Immigrant Youth: Acculturation, Identity and Adaptation. Applied Psychology: An International Review, (5) pp. 303-332.

Adichie, C.N. 2009. The Thing Around Your Neck. Harper Collins, UK.