This Thing Around the Neck

I have been reading Adichie's This Thing Around the Neck. I am somewhat ashamed to say that I haven't yet read her Purple Hibiscus or Half of the Yellow Sun. But now, after reading the short story collection, I can't wait to begin to read them. Then again, it will have to wait. Because I have so much on my plate right now. What struck to me about Adichie's work is the way she is committed to exploring class privilege. She does not attempt to take up the voice of the so-called "sub-altern",unlike some of the recent Anglophone fiction I have been coming across from India (Mridula Koshy and Arvind Adiga). More specifically, her project seems to be an un-folding the complex web of simultaneous marginalizations and privileges that Nigerian middle-class and lower middle-class women are pitted within. I think, it appealed to me precisely because this is also what I am trying to do in my short-stories, and somehow Adichie's short stories seem to me to be more honest and intent than the post-modern sleekness which seems to be the literary fad right now in the post-colonial world. There is something about the good-old realism, when done well.You know what it is, unlike a certain kind of fluffy post-modernism, it doesn't allow the writer to be the air in the fish-net. It demands that a writer pushes his/her comfort zone repeatedly.

Waiting for some feedback on one of my stories. Not much writing has happened during this week. So, will try to do some during this weekend.