The American Embassy

Nicole Gilmer

            Toward the end of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s short story “The American Embassy,” the narrator recalls when a Nigerian professor of politics said that the narrator’s husband “[fought] repression with the pen, … [gave] a voice to the voiceless, … [and made] the world know” (137). I like the way that this parallels Adichie’s own writing. In “The Thing Around Your Neck,” Adichie tells a variety of stories that show the lives of what could be actual Nigerians. Although she writes a work of fiction and the narrator’s husband in “The American Embassy” wrote stories that gave statistics, the two (as authors) are not so different. The narrator’s husband couples his facts with speculation putting the Abacha regime at fault for death and corruption; Adichie uses facts as a background for her fictional characters and their lives. Whereas the narrator’s husband gives voices to the voiceless victims of violence, Adichie gives voice to experience as embodied by the characters she creates. The difference between the two authors is in making “the world know” about Nigeria.

           When the narrator’s husband wrote his stories and articles, he became an enemy of the Abacha regime. Had he not left home and sought asylum in America, he would have most likely been killed; and certainly his family suffered for his writing. Adichie, however, can freely write about life in Nigeria without fear of being persecuted or of having to flee her home and leave her loved ones. I think it is interesting that between the two and their writing styles and circumstances, Adichie is able to let more of the world know what is happening. Because the narrator’s husband spoke out against a regime he was living in the midst of, he was unable to reach a large audience. Adichie wrote after the atrocities that had taken place in Nigeria, and she was able to successfully educate people around the world and make the world know.