The Visit is a specfic short story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie as part of the Black Stars collection.
In this alternate world, most of life is very similar but the genders are reversed. The titular visit is about single career-boy Eze coming back to Nigeria from studying and then working abroad, and visiting his school friend, househusband Obinna. The friends are looking forward to catchup, plus Eze hopes to get some herbal or traditional medical treatment back in Nigeria, since Western medicine doesn’t pay much attention to men’s issues.
Friendships between two women, when one is a wife and mother and the other is single and working, are commonly explored in fiction, and by telling a familiar story with men instead, the story asks readers to notice assumptions. Before Eze’s visit, Obinna reminisces about their friendship and their youth together. Obinna’s parents were just normal, he says, a headmistress and a barber,. Eze’s dad quit working as an actor, since obviously actors are slutty, and now he supports his doctor wife at home, preparing special foods and making sure everything is to her taste. Obinna remembers being corrected for his manners in middle school and being reminded to talk about things women care about, or risk being left on the shelf.
This isn’t a heavy-handed genderswap scifi at all. Things are all fine for Obinna, a househusband in Lagos, it’s just that he lives in a society built for women. Of course husbands are expected to move cities for their wives’ careers and of course it’ll make Nigeria look silly to be the only one sending a male representative to an international summit.
I think it’s the careful language choices and the relationship to familiar chicklit that work so well here. The narrative doesn’t have to state directly that men are second class, it’s in the word choices.
Ever since Obinna’s wife, Amara, was promoted to managing director years ago, she had taken them to London every summer and was considering buying a flat in Maida Vale.
The family doesn’t go to London, Amara takes them. And it’ll be her flat in Maida Vale, too.
At another point, Amara is annoyed at a late breakfast, but also tells Obinna not to stress himself over housekeeping. This is set in Nigerian, and they have a housekeeper responsible for breakfast. Obinna doesn’t cook or clean himself, but he’s already reminded the houseboy to have breakfast on time.
“You shouldn’t let that boy stress you,” Amara said, genial, offhand, as though Obinna chose the stress. She settled down at the table, tugging at the frilly collar of her purple blouse, her clear skin the gorgeous color of baked clay.
“If I don’t stress, then nothing will get done in this house,” Obinna said.
How many times have we all heard this conversation? Don’t stress so much, it’ll all get done, said by the spouse/housemate/relative who isn’t actually helping to get it done. And, yeah, the one saying not to stress is usually a man.
I knew I would like The Visit because I’ve enjoyed the author’s other fiction, but this specfic story was very different from her other work. The Visit takes place in an alternate Nigeria, and I’ve read other fiction set in Nigeria, but I wouldn’t say I’m familiar with it. I think it’s the careful language choices that develop the setting well. At one point, Obinna worries that he’ll become “a Lagos cliché: the husband fighting the boyfriend in public” and another, Eze imagines having a wife in Abuja, which must mean she’s rich and successful. These details make both the genderswap and the background setting clear to readers. I liked this a lot, especially because I think it would be easy for a specfic story, set in a different country, and a short story to be confusing, or difficult to picture. I like scifi collections in general, but when a particular story doesn’t work for me, the reason is often that I couldn’t picture the events clearly or I couldn’t connect to the characters in such a short piece.
The blend of international fiction and specfic in one story worked well for me, because there’s a great deal of worldbuilding and setup crammed in to one very short, very readable story.
The Visit is free to read on Kindle as part of the Black Stars collections.
I love her writing too. I haven’t read this yet but her novel Half of a Yellow Sun is truly a ‘heartbreaking work of staggering genius.’
Half a Yellow Sun and Americanah were the main reasons I wanted to read this one!