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Buchi Emecheta

Nigerian writer (1944–2017)

Florence Onyebuchi "Buchi" Emecheta OBE (July 21, 1944 – 25 January 25, 2017) was a Nigerian-born novelist. Buchi Emechetal also wrote plays and an autobiography, as well as works for children. She was the author of more than 20 books, including Second Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). Most of her early novels were published by Allison and Busby, where her editor was Margaret Busby.

Buchi Emecheta

Emecheta's themes of child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education gained recognition from critics and honours. She once described her stories as "stories of the world, where women face the universal problems of poverty and oppression, and the longer they stay, no matter where they have come from originally, the more the problems become identical." Her works explore the tension between tradition and modernity.She has been characterized as "the first successful black woman novelist living in Britain after 1948".

Quotes

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  • In all my novels… I deal with the many problems and prejudices which exist for Black people in Britain today.
  • I believe it is important to speak to your readers in person... to enable people to have a whole picture of me; I have to both write and speak. I view my role as a writer and also as an oral communicator.
  • But who made the law that we should not hope in our daughters? We, women, subscribe to that law more than anyone. Until we change all this, it is still a man's world, which women will always help to build.”
    • On the female gender (as quoted in [1]).
  • Few things are as bad as a guilty conscience.
    • Speaking on morality [2]
  • Being a woman writer, I would be deceiving myself if I said I write completely through the eye of a man. There’s nothing bad in it, but that does not make me a feminist writer. I hate that name. The tag is from the Western world – like we are called the Third World.
    • Speaking on her writing not as a feminist as quoted in "Zikoko").
  • The first book I wrote was The Bride Price which was a romantic book, but my husband burnt the book when he saw it. I was the typical African woman, I’d done this privately, I wanted him to look at it, approve it and he said he wouldn’t read it.
    • On her tough marriage [3].
  • I am a woman and a woman of Africa. I am a daughter of Nigeria and if she is in shame, I shall stay and mourn with her in shame.
    • Buchi Emecheta speaking on being a Nigerian woman [4].

Head Above Water (1994)

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  • When has it ever been a virtue to be rich in wealth and poor in people?' The relatives nodded. They understood her very well- why have heaven an earth when you have no one to share it with?
  • 1975 was International Women's Year. I had never heard the word 'feminism' before then. I was writing my books from the experiences of my own life and from watching and studying the lives of those around me in general. I did not know that writing the way I was, was putting me into a special category.
  • Writers simply have to write, and not worry so much about what people think, because public opinion is such a difficult horse to ride.
  • “Living entirely off writing is a precarious existence and money is always short, bit with careful management and planning I found I could keep my head and those of my family, through God's grace, above water.”[5]
  • Relatives watching wanted and expected me to break down and cry, thereby devaluing my inner sorrow.[6]
  • “When people are not educated enough for the job market, it is like a time bomb ticking away which could explode in the streets.”[7]
  • I thought at one time I would be thrown out. But I was not.[8]
  • An uneducated person has little chance of happiness. [9]
  • I want to leave my boring job because I want to write, because I want to catch up with goings on in the theatre, because I want to travel and because I want to be with my family. [10]
  • The uneducated man has no such choices. Once he has lost his boring job, he feels he's lost his life. That is unfair.[11]

The Joys of Motherhood (1979)

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  • God, when will you create a woman who will be fulfilled in herself, a full human being, not anybody’s appendage? she prayed desperately.
  • In Ibuza sons help their father more than they help their mother. A mother's joy is only in the name. She worries over them, looks after them when they are small; but in the actual help on the farm, the upholding of the family name, all belong to the father.
  • God, when will you create a woman who will be fulfilled in herself, a full human being, not anybody's appendage? ... when will I be free?
  • Nnu Ego was like those not-so well-informed Christians who,promised the Kingdom of Heaven,believed that it was literally just round the corner and that Jesus Christ was coming on the very morrow. Many of them would hardly contribute anything ton this world,reasoning, "What is the use? Christ will come soon" They became so insulated in their beliefs that not only would they have little to do with ordinary sinners,people going about their daily work, they even pitied them and in many cases looked down on them because the Kingdom of God was not for the likes of them. Maybe this was a protective mechanism devised to save them from realities too painful to accept.
  • Nnaife did not realise that Dr Meers's laughter was inspired by that type of wickedness that reduces any man, white or black, intelligent or not, to a new low; lower than the basest of animals, for animals at least respected each other's feelings, each other's dignity.
  • On her way back to their room, it occurred to Nnu Ego that she was a prisoner, imprisoned by her love for her children, imprisoned by her role as the senior wife. She was not even expected to demand more money for her family; that was considered below the standard expected of a woman in her position. It was not fair, she felt, the way men cleverly used a woman’s sense of responsability to actually enslave her. They knew that the traditional wife like herself would never dream of leaving her children.”
  • “A man is never ugly".”[17]
  • “Don't blame anyone for what has happened to your father. Things have changed drastically since the days of his own youth,but he has refused to see the changes...The fact is that parents get only reflected glory from their children nowadays,whereas your father has invested in all of you, just as his father invested in him so that he could help on the farm. Your father forgot that he himself left the family farm to come to this place.”[18]
  • “Every woman should be free to live the life she chooses.”[19]
  • “The fear of everybody was that the man might give in and say, "After all, it's her life." However a thing like that is not permitted in Nigeria; you are simply not allowed to commit suicide in peace, because everyone is responsible for the other person. Foreigners may call us a nation of busybodies, but to us, an individual's life belongs to the community and not just to him or her.”[20]
  • Yet the more I think about it the more I realise that we women set impossible standards for ourselves.[21]
  • I cannot live up to your standards. [22]
  • “Some parents, especially those who have many children from different wives, may reject a bad son, a master may reject a wicked servant, a wife may go so far as to abandon a bad husband, but a mother can never, never reject her son. If he is convicted, she will be condemned alongside him.”[23]
  • “The more I think about it, the more I realize that we, women, set impossible models for ourselves. That we make life intolerable for each other. I can't live up to our role models, older wife. That’s why I need to create my own.”[24]

Second Class Citizen (1974)

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  • At home in Nigeria, all a mother had to do for a baby was wash and feed him and, if he was fidgety, strap him onto her back and carry on with her work while that baby slept.
  • The leaves were still on the trees but were becoming dry, perched like birds ready to fly off.
  • Dreams soon assume substance
  • Adah could not stop thinking about her discovery that the whites were just as fallible as everyone else. There were bad whites and good whites, just as there were bad blacks and good blacks! Why then did they claim to be superior?
  • “She did not delude herself into expecting Francis to love her. He had never been taught how to love, but had an arresting way of looking pleased at Adah's achievements.”[27]
  • “One thing she did know was the greatest book on human psychology is the Bible. If you were lazy and did not wish to work, or if you had failed to make your way in society, you could always say, 'My kingdom is not of this world.' If you were a jet-set woman who believed in sleeping around, VD or no VD, you could always say Mary Magdalene had no husband, but didn't she wash the feet of Our Lord? Wasn't she the first person to see our risen saviour? If, in the other hand, you believed in the inferiority of the blacks, you could always say, 'Slaves, obey your masters.' It is a mysterious book, one of the greatest of all books, if not the greatest. Hasn't it got all the answers?”[28]
  • “Marriage is lovely when it works, but if it does not, should one condemn oneself ? I stopped feeling guilty for being me.”[29]
  • “She had gambled with marriage, just like most people, but she had gambled unluckily and had lost.”[30]
  • “The concept of whiteness could cover a multitude of sins.”[31]
  • “Typical Igbo psychology; men never do wrong, only the women; they have to beg for forgiveness, because they are bought, paid for and must remain like that, silent, obedient slaves.”[32]
  • “She, who only a few months previously would have accepted nothing but the best, had by now been conditioned to expect inferior things. She was now learning to suspect anything beautiful and pure. Those things were for the whites, not the blacks.”[33]
  • You must know, my dear young lady, that in Lagos you may be a million publicity officers for the Americans; you may be earning a million pounds a day; you may have hundreds of servants: you may be living like an elite, but the day you land in England, you are a second-class citizen.”
  • (Francis, p. 39)
  • Adah could not stop thinking about her discovery that the whites were just as fallible as everyone else. There were bad whites and good whites, just as there were bad blacks and good blacks! Why, then did they claim to be superior?
  • (Narrator, p. 53)
  • Did she not feel totally fulfilled when she had completed the manuscript, just as if it were another baby she had had?
  • (Narrator, p. 166)
  • Her children were going to be different. They were all going to be black, they were going to enjoy being black, be proud of being black, a black of a different breed.
  • (Narrator, p. 141)
  • London, having killed Adah's congregational God, created instead a personal God who loomed large and really alive.
  • (Narrator, p. 151)
  • They were going to get the room they were asking for. Pa Noble was too old for Sue.
  • (Narrator, p. 93)
  • Hunger drove Francis to work as a clerical officer in the post office. Adah's hopes rose. This might save the marriage after all.
  • (Narrator, p. 162)
  • This old friend of Adah's paid for the taxi that took her home from Camden Town because he thought she was still with her husband.
  • (Narrator, p. 175)
  • Then the thought suddenly struck her. Yes, she would go to school.
  • (Narrator, p. 9)
  • So, sorry as she was for making a fool out of an old doctor, this was just one of the cases where honesty would not have been the best policy.
  • (Narrator, p. 42)

The Bride Price(1976)

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  • In Ibuza, every young man was entitled to his fun.

The blame usually went to the girls. A girl who had had adventures before marriage was never respected in her new home; everyone in the village would know about her past, especially if she was unfortunate enough to be married to an egocentric man*

There were men who would go about raping young virgins of thirteen and fourteen, and still expect the women they married to be as chaste as flower buds.*

  • [34]*
  • anything imported was considered to be much better than their own old ways. *

It is so even today in Nigeria: when you have lost your father, you have lost your parents. Your mother is only a woman, and women are supposed to be boneless. A fatherless family is a family without a head, a family without shelter, a family without parents, in fact a non-existing family. Such traditions do not change very much.*

  • “The first book I wrote was The Bride Price which was a romantic book, but my husband burnt the book when he saw it. I was the typical African woman, I’d done this privately, I wanted him to look at it, approve it and he said he wouldn’t read it”.*
  • [37]*

The Slave Girl (1977)

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  • Every woman, whether slave or free, must marry. All her life a woman always belonged to some male. At birth you were owned by your people, and when you were sold you belonged to a new master, when you grew up your new master who had paid something for you would control you.*
  • On each cheek was drawn the outline of a large spinach leaf looking ready to be picked. It was not that many Ibos would have put so many on the face of a little girl. But Ojebeta's mother Umeadi, when she realised that her daughter was going to live, had had reason for going to the expense of engaging the services of the most costly face-maker in Ibuza. For, with such a riot of tribal spinach marks on her only daughter's face, no kidnapper would dream of selling her into slavery. What was more, if she got lost her people would always know her.*
  • My mistress had taught me the precepts of God’s Word: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” “Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them.” But I was her slave, and I suppose she did not recognize me as her neighbor.
  • (Chapter 1 )
  • I spent the day gathering flowers and weaving them into festoons, while the dead body of my father was lying within a mile of me. What cared my owners for that? He was merely a piece of property. Moreover, they thought he had spoiled his children, by teaching them to feel that they were human beings. This was blasphemous doctrine for a slave to teach…
  • (Chapter 2)
  • When my grandmother applied for him for payment he said the estate was insolvent, and the law prohibited payment. It did not, however, prohibit him from retaining the silver candelabra, which had been purchased with that money. I presume they will be handed down in the family, from generation to generation.
  • (Chapter 2)
  • But to the slave mother New Year’s day comes laden with peculiar sorrows. She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may all be torn from her the next morning; and often does she wish that she and they might die before the day dawns. She may be an ignorant creature, degraded by the system that has brutalized her from her childhood; but she has a mother’s instincts, and is capable of a mother’s agonies.
  • (Chapter 3)
  • For my master, whose restless, craving, vicious nature roved about day and night, seeking whom to devour, had just left me, with stinging, scorching words; words that scathed ear and brain like fire. O, how I despised him! I thought how glad I should be if some day when he walked the earth, it would open and swallow him up…
  • (Chapter 4 )
  • He tried his utmost to corrupt the pure principles my grandmother had instilled. He peopled my young mind with unclean images, such as only a vile monster could think of…But he was my master. I was compelled to live under the same roof with him … He told me I was his property; that I must be subject to his will in all things.
  • (Chapter 5 )
  • If God has bestowed beauty upon her, it will prove her greatest curse. That which commands admiration in the white woman only hastens the degradation of the female slave. I know that some are too much brutalized by slavery to feel the humiliation of their position; but many slaves feel it most acutely, and shrink from the memory of it.
  • (Chapter 5 )
  • She felt that her marriage vows were desecrated, her dignity insulted; but she had no compassion for the poor victim of her husband’s perfidy. She pitied herself as a martyr; but she was incapable of feeling for the condition of shame and misery in which her unfortunate, helpless slave was placed.
  • (Chapter 6)
  • The young wife soon learns that the husband in whose hands she has placed her happiness pays no regard to his marriage vows. Children of every shade of complexion play with her own fair babies, and too well she knows that they are born unto him of his own household. Jealousy and hatred enter the flowery home, and it is ravaged of its loveliness.
  • (Chapter 6)
  • Some poor creatures have been so brutalized by the lash that they will sneak out of the way to give their masters free access to their wives and daughters. Do you think this proves the black man to belong to an inferior order of beings? What would you be, if you had been born and brought up a slave…
  • (Chapter 8)
  • I can testify, from my own experience and observation, that slavery is a curse to the whites as well as to the blacks. It makes the white fathers cruel and sensual; the sons violent and licentious; it contaminates the daughters, and makes the wives wretched.
  • (Chapter 9 )
  • But O, ye happy women, whose purity has been sheltered from childhood, who have been free to choose the objects of your affection, whose homes are protected by law, do not judge the poor desolate slave girl too severely! If slavery had been abolished I too could have married the man of my choice; I could have had a home shielded by the laws…
    • (Chapter 10 )
  • You must forsake your sinful ways, and be faithful servants. Obey your old master and your young master…if you disobey your earthly master, you offend your heavenly Master. You must obey God’s commandments.
  • (Chapter 13)
  • Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women. Superadded to the burden common to all, they have wrongs, and sufferings, and mortifications peculiarly their own.
  • (Chapter 14)
  • We knelt down together, with my child pressed to my heart, and my other arm round the faithful, loving old friend I was about to leave forever. On no other occasion has it ever been my lot to listen to so fervent a supplication for mercy and protection. It thrilled through my heart, and inspired me with trust in God.
  • (Chapter 29)
  • Yet that intelligent, enterprising, noble-hearted man was a chattel! Liable, by the laws of a country that calls itself civilized, to be sold with horses and pigs!
  • (Chapter 30)
  • I replied, “God alone knows how much I have suffered; and He, I trust, will forgive me. If I am permitted to have my children, I intend to be a good mother, and to live in such a manner that people cannot treat me with contempt.
  • (Chapter 31)
  • I did not discover till years afterward that Mr. Thorne’s intemperance was not the only annoyance she suffered from…he had poured vile language into the ears of [Grandmother’s] innocent great-grandchild.
  • (Chapter 36)
  • I thought that if he was my own father, he ought to love me. I was a little girl then, and didn’t know any better. But now I never think any thing about my father. All my love is for you.
  • (Chapter 39)
  • Reader, my story ends with freedom; not in the usual way, with marriage….The dream of my life is not yet realized. I do not sit with my children in a home of my own.
  • (Chapter 41 )
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