The Brother-sister relationship conflicts within Cell One and Tomorrow is Too Far

One of the main similarities that I discovered after reading Cell One and Tomorrow is Too Far is the tension within the sister-brother relationships. Both narrators hold some sort of bitterness against their brother because he is the favored child: in Cell One the mother consistently covers up for her son’s mistakes and wrongdoings, and in Tomorrow is Too Far the grandmother shows him more love because he is the son who will carry on the family name. However, while in Cell One the sister eventually reaches some sort of resolution with her brother, the sister of Tomorrow still retains this hatred.

When they visit her brother in Jail in Cell One, the sister seems to be feeling more frustration and annoyance laced with bitterness, as she mentions, “I wanted to ask him to shut up because he was enjoying himself in his new role as the sufferer of indignities, and because he did not understand how lucky he was that the policemen allowed him to come out and eat our food, how stupid he’d been to stay out drinking that night, how uncertain his chances were of being released” (13). For so long his mother has shown him favoritism and covered up for his mistakes that he now takes this mercy for granted, which frustrates his sister. However, though there is this undertone of bitterness throughout, she ultimately sees in her brother that he is not all she believes him to be, that he has changed. As the story ends, the sister describes how “it would have been easy for him, my charming brother, to make a sleek drama of his story, but he did not” (21). While the sister had acted out against her brother, throwing a rock against the car’s windshield to stop the family visiting, she has finally realized that perhaps there is more to him that she thinks. And, as she sees that he is able to change, she realizes that so can she.

However, the sister from Tomorrow is Too Far has no problem holding on to any resentment towards her brother. Tired of being second rate in everything through her grandmother’s and mother’s eyes, the sister lets her bitterness get out of control, so much that it results in her brother’s death. But even after her brother dies, the bitterness does not subside— She does not want to keep any of her brother’s things, and her mother and father still do not pay attention to her. Ultimately, she never finds resolution with the relationships in her life—her father, mother, grandfather, brother, cousin—while the sister of Cell One reaches some sort of closure with hers. 

Food culture

This past June, when I visited my aunt and uncle in the Netherlands, one of the most memorable parts of my visit was cooking with them in the evenings. As we talked about the day, they taught me how to peel white asparagus, stuff apples with ginger and cinnamon, and slice herring. Then, when we visited Madrid together, over some oysters and horchata we met a man from Moscow who works for Lego, an Israeli man from New York who was temporarily assuming all foods were Kosher, and a couple from the Philippines who had just ditched their tour guide group to find some real Spanish food. During this trip, I realized just how integral of a role food plays in our lives—eating brings us together with others, people that we already know and also those that you don't. 

So, naturally, I wanted to know more about the food Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up with and mentions in her works.

In Nigeria, there are a variety of tribes that have their own culture. But overall, the eating habits look like this: In the early morning—around 5 or 6—a small breakfast of rice, fruit (mangoes, bananas, oranges, grapefruit), and soybeans is eaten. Around 11 am lunch is eaten. This is the most important meal of the day, and there will usually be a stew or soup served, like the onogbu soup mentioned in The Thing Around Your Neck. Dinner, another soup or stew, tends to be served much later in the day.

Also, while some of the main foods of Nigeria are native, such as rice, millet, and lentils, others like beans, cassava, and maize, were brought over by European settlers.

There are foods that are also more specific to the different tribes of Nigeria. For the Igbo, yams are the staple food, and main dishes are made up of a starch, a soup, and a meat—usually chicken, fish, beef, or goat. Dumplings and pumpkins are also commonly used in dishes.

Nigerian yams

Adichie also mentions a few specific meals in her stories. Garri, the familiar food made in the narrator's uncle's home in The Thing Around Your Neck, is a starchy paste that comes from the root of the cassava plant. The root is dried and ground up, and then mixed with water or milk.

Garri, in powder form, before it's mixed with water or milk

 

Dry garri on the left, cooked garri on the right.

Jollof rice, what the mother in Cell One uses to bribe the policemen, is a type of rice cooked with meat, spices, tomatoes, and peppers. It’s usually eaten alongside meat.

Jollof rice

Onugbu soup is soup made with bitterleaf. The leaves are washed and squeezed to get rid of the bitter taste, and is then mixed with palm oil, beef, fish, and cocoyam.  

Onugbu soup
http://www.allnigerianrecipes.com/soups/bitterleaf-soup.html

Washing the bitterleaves

http://www.foodbycountry.com/Kazakhstan-to-South-Africa/Nigeria.html

http://www.allnigerianrecipes.com/soups/bitterleaf-soup.html

http://www.everyculture.com/wc/Mauritania-to-Nigeria/Igbo.html#b 

Confessions of a hoarder. A memory hoarder, that is.

I have this weird fascination with the past.

In a way, I’m sort of a memory hoarder.

I keep plane tickets, seashells, letters and photos, newspaper clippings, diaries from when I was five years old. (Once I even saved my brother’s hair that fell to the kitchen floor when my mom gave him a hair cut… don’t judge)

Some leaves I found during the summer.

Some birch bark, a rock, a queen bee cell from a beehive.

My plane ticket to Machu Picchu last summer!

My older brother and me at home in Minnesota, 1995

Sports day at school in England! Apparently I was the slowest kid, finishing last. But my egg didn't break!

But it’s not just my own life I’m obsessed with documenting; I can spend hours flipping through family photos and letters, squinting at the blurry faces and reading the notes on the back.

I guess I’ve just always felt like there is more to my own self that I don’t know about. As if, where I come from and who my family members are and what they did holds some great secret to my identity that is just waiting for me to stumble upon inside the sentence of a letter or a face in a photograph. 

My father’s side of the family has been especially mysterious to me.

Because my parents are British, only immigrating 20ish years ago, all my extended family lives in England. So, I never really became too close with my paternal grandparents since we weren’t able to visit them that often. 

But two years ago, my dad's dad passed away. When my parents returned from the funeral, they brought back with them photos from my granddad’s house, a few of distant relatives from the early 1900s, but mostly of my grandfather and grandmother from when they were teenagers up until now.

These photos were golden.

My grandma, Rita. I think she's around my age in this photo.

In Paris...not quite sure when.

South Africa...probably in the '70s

Mystery boys. On the back is written 'with love to Rita.  From John, Pete, and Len'. Potential love interests of my young grandmother??

After I found these photos, I learned even more from my dad: my Grandparents grew up in the east end of London in the 1950s, that they had been married before they married each other, and because of this, moved to South Africa soon after to start a new life together.  (I also learned that my great-grandfather did some black market trading during the Second World War. SKETCHY.)

I guess I'm still waiting for whatever this great mystery to my identity is (it's probably just some crazy idea created in my mind, anyway). But, for now, I'll stick with flipping my way through these photographs, and saving some of my own to leave for another weird person obsessed with the past.   

Notes on writing

Don't confuse legibility with communication. Just because something is legible doesn't mean it communicates and, more importantly, doesn't mean it communicates the right thing.

David Carson

Never be ashamed of your subject, and of your passion for your subject

Joyce Carol Oates, To a Young Writer

Be nobody's darling; 


Be an outcast.


Take the contradictions


Of your life


And wrap around


You like a shawl,

To parry stones


To keep you warm.

Alice Walker, 'Be Nobody’s Darling'

An idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all  

Oscar Wilde

Writers don’t need tricks or gimmicks or even necessarily need to be the smartest fellows on the block. At the risk of appearing foolish, a writer sometimes needs to be able to just stand and gape at this or that thing—a sunset or an old shoe—in absolute and simple amazement.

Raymond Carver, Principles of a story

The way to […] write [is] as long as you can live and there is pencil and paper or ink or any machine to do it with, or anything you care to write about, and you feel a fool, and you are a fool, to do it any other way.

Ernest Hemingway, Green Hills of Africa

“If even rock was interesting, if even this ugliness was worth whole shelves at the library, required sophisticated tools to study, and inspired grown men to crack mountains and saw crystals--then what wasn't?”

Annie Dillard, An American Childhood