Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s short story Zikora delivers a poignant, nuanced narrative about childbirth, love, loss and female relationships. Released yesterday, Zikora tells the story of a high-powered D.C. lawyer of the same name, whose equally successful boyfriend leaves her after she becomes pregnant. With her life turned upside down, she is left alone, save for her mother, whose rigidity often exacerbates rather than appeases her loneliness. Despite being just 35 pages, Zikora provides readers with a complex set of characters, who are well-rounded, real and fallible.
I’ve read all of Adichie’s fiction, and the last thing I read before Zikora (somewhat reluctantly) was her short story collection, The Thing Around Your Neck. At the time, I couldn’t imagine enjoying her short stories as much as her full-length novels, which leave you feeling the way a young teen feels after finishing the Harry Potter series—desperately wanting more. Despite my reluctance, Adichie brings a whole set of writerly tools to the table for her short stories that are both fun to pick up on and, true to form, leave you wanting more.
First and foremost, Adichie is a master of transitions. She will often boil down a scene into a few beautifully crafted, expository sentences and place them at the beginning or end of a scene. Depending on their placement, these lines will either help transition readers rapidly into or out of new excerpts. For example, Adichie opens a passage, describing when 19-year-old Zikora went to a clinic alone to have an abortion:
“Some kindnesses you do not ever forget. You carry them to your grave, held warmly somewhere, brought up and savored from time to time. Such was the kindness of the African American woman with short pressed hair at the Planned Parenthood clinic on Angel Street.”
The scene is no more than a page, and she immediately transitions back to the narrative’s present with the poignant, opening passage:
“My father told jokes and laughed and charmed everyone, and broke things and walked on the shards without knowing he had broken things. He didn’t call on the day my son was born; he called the day after.”
Both excerpts tell readers that they’ve moved to a different setting and help the audience emotionally prepare for what lies ahead.
Secondly, Adichie uses supporting characters to amplify readers’ understanding of the main characters and their relationship to one another. In Zikora, she employs several, secondary female characters, who help Zikora reflect on how she identifies as a woman, partner, new mother and daughter. Her cousin Mmiliaku serves as her primary confidant. Both women lead different lives and hold varying values, but in the end, they listen and support one another.
Although the female characters do not necessarily always get along in Zikora, there is a subtle comradery that appears even in the most minor female characters. A shared struggle. One example is the maternity ward nurse, who Zikora initially loathes because of her fake eyelashes and general demeanor. However, when she struggles to decide on her own whether her son should be circumcised, the nurse assists her. To which, Zikora reacts, “Something about her manner made sobs gather at my throat. Compassion. She thought what I was feeling mattered.”
Further, the relationship between Zikora and her mother is arguably the most strained and the primary focus of the narrative. As Zikora maneuvers life as a young mother, her understanding and connection to her own mother begins to strengthen. In the last scene, her mother’s last line acts as a kind of final transition out of the narrative and back to reality: “Stay and stand by me.” The shared moments between women are what make Zikora a truly powerful read and make you want to call your own mom or a best female friend.
STATS
Title: Zikora
Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Publication Year: 2020
Pages: 35
Very unexpected story