Collision of Divergent Views in "Tomorrow Is Too Far"

“Tomorrow Is Too Far”, narrates, in the second person, you, a woman of Nigerian heritage living in New York, returning to Nigeria after the death of your paternal grandmother. In using the second person point of view, Adichie directly inserts the reader into the story as a character, not just as a passive observer. This story fluctuates between the present and past tense, unfolding memories and family secrets from the past alongside your current experience returning to Nigeria after eighteen years away. Unlike the other stories in The Thing Around Your Neck, “Tomorrow Is Too Far” does not have any direct connections to war or revolutionary violence. Instead, the story focuses on the collision of traditional patriarchal oppression, visible in Grandmama’s preferment of Nonso over her other grandchildren, and your American upbringing, away from traditional Nigerian values.

“It was the summer you asked Grandmama why Nonso sipped first even though Dozie was thirteen, a year older than Nonso, and Grandmama said Nonso was her son’s only son, the one who would carry on the Nnabuisi name, while Dozie was only a nwadiana, her daughter’s son” (188). In your grandmother’s preoccupation with the patriarchal family name, you and Dozie build a connection with each other and form resentment toward Nonso. “[Y]ou both needed Nonso to get hurt…. You wanted to mar the perfection of his lithe body, to make him less lovable, less able to do all that he did. Less able to take up your space” (195). Grandmama’s patriarchal oppression of you and your nwadiana cousin, Dozie creates the tension and resentment that leave you, unintentionally, responsible for your brother Nonso’s death. Again, the collision between divergent traditional Nigerian values and more modern American perspectives creates a rift in the family that, even after Grandmama’s death, remains unrepaired.