Birdsong

“Birdsong” (2010), by Nigerian American author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, is a short story first published in The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40” series. “Birdsong” focuses on a young Nigerian woman’s affair with an older, married man. Like many of Adichie’s works, the story explores how gender impacts women’s private and public lives. Adichie’s debut novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003), won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Hurston Wright Legacy Award. Her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), won the Orange Prize and was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist as well as a New York Times Notable Book. It was adapted into a film in 2013. That same year, Adichie published Americanah, which also received multiple awards. Adichie is an international speaker, particularly known for her 2009 TED Talk “The Danger of the Single Story,” which is one of the most-viewed TED Talks of all time. Adichie has written other novels, essays, and short stories.

This guide refers to the original version of the text available on The New Yorker website.

“Birdsong” employs a first-person, limited point of view to follow the thoughts, actions, and emotions of an unnamed female narrator in modern-day Lagos, Nigeria. The nonlinear narrative applies flashback, framing and exposition techniques to highlight the gendered social and cultural expectations that impede the narrator’s attempts to explore her own desires in an authentic way.

The text begins with the narrator sitting in traffic. She notices a woman staring at her from the backseat of the jeep beside her.  The woman’s haughty stare signals her upper-class status. She thinks of the married man she’s having an affair with—whom she calls her “lover” for lack of a better term—and wonders whether his wife is like this woman: “a woman for whom things were done” (Paragraph 1).

The narrator then relays her past experiences with her coworkers, boss and lover. She introduces her work colleague, Chikwado, whom she is only “friends with out of necessity” (Paragraph 3). Although the narrator attempts to keep her personal life private, Chikwado deduces that she’s having an affair; she was there when the narrator and her lover met at her job, and she noticed the interactions between the pair.

The narrator views Chikwado’s opinions on her relationship as condescension disguised as friendliness. Despite her reservations, the narrator realizes that Chikwado’s actions arise from her desire to settle down and her fear that she will fail to find a mate before aging out of the marriage market (Paragraph 4), an anxiety shared by the other women who work at their company.

The narrator’s lover assumes that she, too, will want to “settle down,” and he promises that he will “not stand in [her] way” (Paragraph 5) when she wants to move on from the relationship. When he tells her this, she feels hurt, realizing that he sees no possibility of a future for them. She thinks in retrospect that she should have ended the affair right then, but instead she moves into a house he owns in another part of the city. She learns his habits: He likes to watch birds, and she begins to take an interest in them as well. He is generous but vain, frequently going out of his way to help others, then basking in their praise and thanks. During a conversation about the mating habits of birds, the narrator expresses doubt at her lover’s claim that birds do not have penises. Her lover makes an unintentional pun (“Did you ever see a cock with a dick?” (Paragraph 15)) which led to him signing his text messages to her as “CwithaD” as a term of endearment.

The story returns to the present, where the woman in the other car maintains eye contact with her. Despite the busy street, the woman continues to stare until the narrator looks away. As she sits in traffic, the narrator observes the influx of hawkers selling wares. When she looks at the woman again, she thinks of Chikwado’s comment about her lover having a “face [full] of overseas” (Paragraph 18). This memory causes the narrator to wonder if the woman who stared at her was indeed her lover’s wife, but she dismisses this possibility, as she believes her lover is too cautious to be caught in the affair.

The narrative returns to the past, where the narrator considers her yearning for a deeper connection with her lover. She admits to seeing a Disconnection between her ability to sleep with him and her inability to ask him questions. Eventually, she and her lover have an argument about the way his driver, Emmanuel, treats her. The narrator feels that Emmanuel does not treat her the same way as he does his employer’s wife. Her lover downplays the narrator’s feelings about the situation and claims that she misunderstood Emmanuel (Paragraph 34). She asks him if this is his usual practice: to have his driver remind his girlfriends of their “place” (Paragraph 35). He calls her “feisty,” like his two previous mistresses (Paragraph 40), and she calls him a bastard. The insult shocks him, and he throws her out of the house. Five days later, he calls to say that there are pigeons in a tree on the property and he’d like her to see them. Looking back, the narrator says, “I should not have gone back—I knew that even then” (Paragraph 46).

In the present, the narrator witnesses the woman talking on her cell phone while still staring at her. She compares the woman’s car to her own and the cars around them. Remembering how damaged her own car is, the narrator recalls a car accident she had with a taxi driver, which leads to a memory of Chikwado gossiping about the incident with the other women at her work. The women’s conversation morphs into a discussion about fertility biscuits provided by a pastor at a church. The narrator thought about what her lover would think about the story and realized that her lover was in America at a concert with his wife. Jealous, she imagines the couple’s actions at the concert.

When the lover returns from America, he is in a buoyant mood and wants to take her out to dinner, saying he has a surprise for her. While he is in the bathroom,  she reads his text messages to his wife and realizes that he has been signing them “CwithaD”—a term of endearment she had thought was only for her. Later, in the car, she expresses her dismay at the difference between his relationship with his wife and herself. He attempts to console her as they return to a restaurant they have visited many times.

At the restaurant, the narrator notices that the waitstaff never greet her although they always greet her lover. She angrily confronts the waiter about this discrepancy, causing a minor scene and embarrassing her lover. The lover reveals his surprise: He has bought her a new car. She imagines that he is expecting profuse gratitude and joy, but she is only frustrated that he does not understand what she really wants. She tells him about her arrival in Lagos and about the “rituals of distrust” (75) that everyone learns when they first arrive in the city from more rural areas. Her lover appears uninterested in her observations. She sees his lack of interest as confirmation that he does not really see her: He only wants her to show excitement and gratitude for what he can give her.

In the present, a boy attempts to wash her windshield. At first she wants to slap him, but she quickly realizes that she really wants to hit the woman staring at her (Paragraph 91). She shouts at the woman through her car window. The woman appears to be smiling as traffic moves. The story concludes with the narrator watching the woman’s car speed away.