Perspectives

Literary perspectives

The short story “On Monday of Last Week” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has several elements of post-modernist literature.

The focus on the main character’s thought process, which is often ambiguous and conflicted, is a post-modernist element. Throughout the story, we only see things from Kamara’s perspective. Th…

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Works by the same author

Another story by the same author is “The Thing Around Your Neck”. In both stories, the main characters experience culture shock when arriving in America and have difficulties adjusting to their new environment. Additionally, both Akunna from “The Thing Around Your Neck” and Kamara become estranged from their boyfriends. This is an additional source of stress which hinders their adjustment. While in “The Thing Around Your Neck”, Akunna eventually decides to return to Nigeria, Kamara does not appear to consider this.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie also wrote the short story “Jumping Monkey Hill”. In this short story, a Nigerian woman writes a story about her experiences during a writer’s workshop only for the leader of the workshop, a white man named Edward, to call the story exaggerated. Although, just like in “On Monday of Last Week”, the short story tackles issues such as cultural differences, the focus is more on Edward’s unwillingness to accept another cultural perspective.

You can also look at Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED talk, “The Danger of a Single Story”. Here, Adichie encourages listening to more than one perspective on history, as paying attention to a single perspective might lead people to have prejudiced and often wrong ideas about hist…