Identity & Belonging

Explorations of self, belonging, and what it means to find your place.

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The Thing Around Your Neck

The Thing Around Your Neck

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The Thing Around Your Neck is a collection of twelve short stories exploring the experiences of Nigerians living both at home and abroad, particularly in the United States. Adichie portrays characters negotiating cultural expectations, family obligations, gender inequality, political instability, and the complicated realities of immigration. In the title story, a young Nigerian woman moves to America, where her hopes for a better life are challenged by loneliness, financial insecurity, and the feeling of being misunderstood. Other stories examine strained marriages, religious divisions, family secrets, and the gap between how people perceive Nigeria and how Nigerians experience their own country. With emotional precision and understated humour, Adichie explores the tension between tradition and modernity, revealing how migration and cultural encounters can transform people’s understanding of themselves and their relationships.

Americanah

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Americanah follows Ifemelu and Obinze, two young Nigerians whose love story unfolds across continents as they navigate migration, race, and the search for belonging. As a university student, Ifemelu moves to the United States, where she confronts the realities of being Black in a society that forces her to reconsider her identity. Through her experiences with relationships, work, and cultural differences, she develops a popular blog examining race and everyday life in America. Meanwhile, Obinze hopes to build a future in Britain but encounters a very different set of obstacles as an undocumented immigrant. Years later, Ifemelu returns to Nigeria, bringing with her a transformed understanding of home and the person she has become. As the two reconnect, they must confront the ways their experiences have changed them and consider whether their relationship can survive the passage of time. Blending romance with sharp social commentary, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie explores race, immigration, class, cultural identity, and the complex meaning of home in an interconnected world.

Tomorrow I Become a Woman

Tomorrow I Become a Woman

Aiwanose Odafen

Tomorrow I Become a Woman follows three Nigerian women whose lives are shaped by the expectations, traditions, and social pressures surrounding womanhood. Set in contemporary Nigeria, the novel explores the tensions between personal freedom and cultural obligations, particularly in a society where women’s choices about marriage, education, sexuality, and independence are often constrained by family and community expectations. Through the experiences of its female characters, Aiwanose Odafen examines how women navigate relationships, confront unequal power structures, and struggle to define themselves on their own terms. The novel also explores the influence of religion, tradition, and social class on women’s lives, revealing the emotional costs of conforming to expectations that may conflict with their own desires. With an intimate focus on female friendship, resilience, and self-discovery, Tomorrow I Become a Woman asks what it means to become a woman in a world that has already decided what womanhood should look like.

Necessary Fiction

Necessary Fiction

Eloghosa Osunde

In Lagos, a vibrant cast of queer Nigerians navigate love, desire, family expectations, and the courage to live on their own terms. From artists and lovers to parents and friends, their lives intertwine as they confront the stories they have constructed to survive in a society that often refuses to accept them as they are. Through intimate relationships, unexpected connections, and moments of radical self-discovery, Eloghosa Osunde explores what it means to create a family beyond blood ties and to claim the freedom to define oneself. Tender, defiant, and deeply human, Necessary Fiction is a celebration of chosen family, queer identity, and the complicated fictions we sometimes need to survive.

Death of the Author

Death of the Author

Death of the Author follows Zelu, a Nigerian American writer who faces professional setbacks and personal challenges after losing her academic job. Unable to find success with the literary fiction she has been writing, she turns to science fiction and creates Rustic, a novel set in a distant future where robots struggle to understand humanity after a global catastrophe. The book unexpectedly becomes a bestseller, transforming Zelu’s life while raising difficult questions about authorship, recognition, and the relationship between a writer and her work. As Zelu navigates newfound fame, family tensions, and questions about her physical disability, her fictional world unfolds alongside her own story. The novel moves between these narratives, exploring how stories shape our understanding of humanity and whose voices are permitted to imagine the future. Blending speculative fiction, literary metafiction, and social commentary, Okorafor examines disability, technology, race, creativity, and the meaning of storytelling. The novel challenges conventional ideas about literary value and asks who has the authority to tell stories—and what happens when those stories take on a life of their own.

Dream Count

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, has been successful at everything until—betrayed and brokenhearted—she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin Omelogor is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America—but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve. Dream Count is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s searing, unforgettable story of these four women—a sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself.

About this theme

Books: 6
Countries: 72

Countries with this theme

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Congo, Democratic Republic

Dominican Republic

North Macedonia