“Chuka”
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
from the February 17 & 24, 2025 issue of The New Yorker
I still haven’t read one of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novels, though I’ve been meaning to read Half a Yellow Sun and Americanah for ages. There are many things I’ve been meaning to read for ages, but Americanah in particular is one I need to get to sooner than later. But in the meantime, here we get one of her stories.
Here is the long opening paragraph to “Chuka”:
I have always longed to be known, truly known, by another human being. Sometimes we live for years with yearnings that we cannot name. Until a crack appears in the sky and widens and reveals us to ourselves, as the pandemic did, because it was during lockdown that I began to sift through my life and give names to things long unnamed. I vowed at first to make the most of this collective sequestering: if I had no choice but to stay indoors, then I would oil my thinning edges every day, drink eight tall glasses of water, jog on the treadmill, sleep long, luxurious hours, and pat rich serums on my skin. But, only days in, I was spiralling in a bottomless well. Words and warnings swirled and spun, and I felt as if all human progress was swiftly reversing to an ancient stage of confusion: don’t touch your face; wash your hands; don’t go outside; spray disinfectant; wash your hands; don’t go outside; don’t touch your face. Did washing my face count as touching? I always used a face towel, but one morning my palm grazed my cheek and I froze, the tap water still running. I was alone in my house in Maryland, in suburban silence, the eerie roads bordered by trees that themselves seemed stilled. No cars drove past. I looked out and saw a herd of deer striding across the clearing of my front yard. About ten deer, or maybe fifteen, nothing like the lone deer I would see from time to time chewing shyly in the grass. I felt frightened of them, their unusual boldness, as though my world was about to be overrun not just by deer but by other lurking creatures I could not imagine. My joints throbbed, and the muscles of my back, and the sides of my neck, as if my body knew too well that we are not made to live like this.
If you have a comment about the story, please leave it below!
Where are the “Mooksers” of yore who would post and let me see other opinions AFTER I had read a New Yorker story. I would say “what are the Mooksers thinking tonight” sort of to the tune of a song from “Gigi.”
And now…..???
At first, this seemed highly familiar–a Westernized woman living in the U.S. from a more traditional cutlure (India, Egypt, China) who is not interested in pursuing a traditional arranged marriage. Here, the man is seemingly ideal, but ultimately being “honored” is not what she wants. She questions whether she wants to “live adrift in gratitude because a man loves you”
The story becomes more nuanced as does the character and since this woman, whose name–Chiamaka–is simlar to the author’s and who is an author AND the protagonist of Adichie’s next novel, we know we’ll go deeper into her psychology, her ambivalence, her dreams and it will be rewarding.
That said, this still works well as a short story despite being an excerpt. It has a satisfying “arc” as it were.
The author has had huge exposure in the UK. This is not only online but featured on the cover page of one of the UK’s top news magazines — https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/feb/15/cancel-culture-we-should-stop-it-end-of-story-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-on-backlash-writers-block-and-her-two-new-babies
“Chuka” is such a great meditation on the question of whether a woman or anyone should live a single or doubled up life of marriage or a close partner relationship.
Does one need the validation of another’s love or can one proceed out on the sea of life filled with possibility and yet proceed alone upon the course that fewer of us take?
It is great that the goodness of a man or the potential goodness of a particular man is well represented. The urgency of general genderal necessities recedes a bit to make room for the most important decisions of direction a woman or a man or anyone must take in order to make the most out of their life.
My favorite line from this story is the one, “The problem is that many of these people don’t think think we also dream,”
This specifically refers to an editor telling a writer what their book should be about.
The fact is we are usually told by someone in higher authority or a gatekeeper of some sort, what we should dream and how we should live when inevitably the actual dream we are having, never is the dream they think we should actually be having.
It’s usually an easier option but more difficult if is not the direction one feels they should really take.
The brilliance of this story is showing the pitfalls without lessening what is on offer. Yet carefully realizing what to say or do after a proper and thorough due diligence has been taken.