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Buchi Emecheta

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Buchi Emecheta
OBE
Born
Florence Onyebuchi Emecheta

(1944-07-21)21 July 1944
Lagos, Lagos State, Nigeria
Died25 January 2017(2017-01-25) (aged 72)
London, England
NationalityNigerian
EducationMethodist Girls' School
University of London
OccupationWriter
Notable work

Buchi Emecheta OBE (born Florence Onyebuchi Emecheta; 21 July 1944 – 25 January 2017) was a Nigerian writer[1] who was the author of novels, plays, autobiography, and children's books. She first received notable critical attention for her 1974 novel, Second Class Citizen.[2] Her other books include The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). Emecheta has been characterized as "the first successful black woman novelist living in Britain after 1948".[3]

Born in Lagos, Nigeria, Emecheta drew in her writing on themes of child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education, gaining recognition from critics and honours especially with her debut novel, Second Class Citizen. Her works often explore the themes of culture, and tensions between tradition and modernity.[4] Most of her early novels were published by Allison and Busby, and her editor was Margaret Busby.[1]

Life

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Background and marriage

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Emecheta was born on 21 July 1944, in Lagos, Colonial Nigeria, to Igbo parents of Anioma extraction,[5][6] Alice Okwuekwuhe and Jeremy Nwabudinke Emecheta[7][8] from Umuezeokolo Odeanta village in Ibusa, Delta State. Her father was a railway worker and moulder.[7] Her mother, Alice Ogbanje Ojebeta Emecheta,[9] was a former slave girl sold into slavery by her brother to a relative to buy silk head ties for his coming-of-age dance. When her mistress died, Ogbanje Emecheta returned home to freedom.

Emecheta completed her early childhood education at an all-girls' missionary school. At 9, she lost her father, who died of the complications from a wound which he contracted in the swamps of Burma, where he had been conscripted to fight for Lord Louis Mountbatten and the remnants of the British Empire.[10][11] After a year, she received a fully funded scholarship to Methodist Girls' School in Yaba, Lagos, where she remained until the age of 16. During this time, her mother died, leaving Emecheta an orphan. In 1960, she married Sylvester Onwordi,[6][8] a schoolboy to whom she had been engaged since she was 11 years old.[12][13] Later that year, she gave birth to a daughter, and in 1961 their younger son was born.[1]

Onwordi moved to London for his studies, and Emecheta joined him there with their first two children in 1962.[1] In the next six years, she would give birth to five children; three daughters and two sons.[13] According to Emecheta, her marriage was an unhappy and sometimes violent one; details of which she would incorporate in her autobiographical book, Second Class Citizen.[1][14] To keep her sanity, Emecheta wrote in her spare time. However, her husband was deeply suspicious of her writing, and he ultimately burned her first manuscript,[15] as revealed in The Bride Price, which was eventually published in 1976. It had been her first book, but she had to rewrite it after the earlier version had been destroyed. As she later said, "There were five years between the two versions."[16]

At the age of 22, pregnant with her fifth child, Emecheta left her husband.[17][18] While working to support her children alone, she earned a B.Sc. (Hons) degree in Sociology in 1972 from the University of London.[6][7][17] In her 1984 autobiography, Head above Water, she wrote: "As for my survival for the past twenty years in England, from when I was a little over twenty, dragging four cold and dripping babies with me and pregnant with a fifth one—that is a miracle."[19] She went on to gain her PhD from the university in 1991.[20]

Writing

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Emecheta began writing about her experiences of Black British life in a regular column in the New Statesman,[1] and a collection of these pieces became her first published book in 1972, In the Ditch.[6][17] The semi-autobiographical novel[5] chronicled the struggles of a main character named Adah, who is forced to live in a housing estate while working as a librarian to support her five children.[6] Her second novel, Second-Class Citizen (Allison and Busby, 1974),[21] was published two years later, and also drew on Emecheta's own experiences. Both books were eventually published in one volume by Allison and Busby under the title Adah's Story (1983).[22] These three stories introduced Emecheta's three major themes, which were the quest for equal treatment, self-confidence and dignity as a woman. Her works Gwendolen (1989, also published as The Family), Kehinde (1994) and The New Tribe (2000) differ in some way, as they address the issues of immigrant life in Great Britain.[4] Most of her fictional works are focused on sexual discrimination and racial prejudice, informed by her own experiences as both a single parent and a black woman living in the United Kingdom.[23]

From 1965 to 1969, Emecheta worked as a library officer for the British Museum in London.[7] From 1969 to 1976, she was a youth worker and sociologist for the Inner London Education Authority,[7][24] and from 1976 to 1978 she worked as a community worker in Camden, North London,[5][7] while continuing to produce further novels at Allison and Busby, with Margaret Busby as her editor[1] – The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977), The Joys of Motherhood (1979) and Destination Biafra (1982) – as well as the children's books Titch the Cat (1979, based on a story by her 11-year-old daughter Alice)[25] and Nowhere To Play (1980).[26]

Following Emecheta's success as an author, she travelled widely as a visiting professor and lecturer. She visited several American universities, including Pennsylvania State University, Rutgers University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.[7][27] From 1980 to 1981, she was senior resident fellow and visiting professor of English at the University of Calabar, Nigeria.[8] From 1982 to 1983, Emecheta, together with her son Sylvester, ran the Ogwugwu Afor Publishing Company, producing her own work under the imprint,[17] beginning with Double Yoke (1982).[28] She received an Arts Council of Great Britain bursary, 1982–83,[5][8] and was one of Granta magazine's "Best of Young British Novelists" in 1983.[17] In 1982, she lectured at Yale University, and the University of London.[8] She became a Fellow at the University of London in 1986.[29]

Over her career, Emecheta worked with many cultural and literary organizations, including the Africa Centre, London, and with the Caine Prize for African Writing as a member of the Advisory Council.[30]

Buchi Emecheta suffered a stroke in 2010,[17] and her last years were marked by increasing disability and illness.[10] She died in London on 25 January 2017, aged 72.[17][21][31]

Awards and recognition

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Among the honours received during her literary career, Emecheta won the 1978 Jock Campbell Prize[1] from the New Statesman (first won by Chinua Achebe's Arrow of God)[32] for her novel The Slave Girl,[5][33] and she was on Granta magazine's 1983 list of 20 "Best of Young British Novelists".[17][33][34] She was a member of the British Home Secretary's Advisory Council on Race in 1979.[8]

In September 2004, she appeared in the "A Great Day in London" photograph taken at the British Library, featuring 50 Black and Asian writers who have made major contributions to contemporary British literature.[35][36] In 2005, she was made an OBE for services to literature.[17]

She received an Honorary doctorate of literature from Farleigh Dickinson University in 1992.[37]

Legacy

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In 2017, Emecheta's son Sylvester Onwordi announced the formation of the Buchi Emecheta Foundation – a charitable organisation promoting literary and educational projects in the UK and in Africa[38] – which was launched in London on 3 February 2018 at the Brunei Gallery, SOAS, together with new editions of several of her books published by Onwordi through his Omenala Press.[39][40][41] Among participants in the "Celebrating Buchi Emecheta" day-long event[42] – "a gathering of writers, critics, artists, publishers, literature enthusiasts and cultural activists from all over the world, including London and other parts of the U.K., France, Germany, U.S., Canada, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, and the Caribbean" – were Diane Abbott, Leila Aboulela, Carole Boyce Davies, Margaret Busby, James Currey, Louisa Uchum Egbunike, Ernest Emenyonu, Akachi Ezeigbo, Kadija George, Mpalive Msiska, Grace Nichols, Alastair Niven, Irenosen Okojie, Veronique Tadjo, Marie Linton Umeh, Wangui wa Goro, and Bibi Bakare-Yusuf.[43][44]

Emecheta features at number 98 on a list of 100 women recognised in August 2018 by BBC History Magazine as having changed the world.[45][46]

In March 2019, Camden Town Brewery launched a football kit using artwork featuring "some of the most inspiring female icons to have influenced the brewery's home borough of Camden".[47]

On 21 July 2019, which would have been Emecheta's 75th birthday,[48] Google commemorated her life with a Doodle.[49][50][51][52][53]

In October 2019, a new exhibition space in the library for students at Goldsmiths, University of London, was dedicated to Buchi Emecheta, marked by a reception with short talks by Goldsmiths warden Frances Corner and the Head of Library Services, Leo Appleton, preceding an address by Margaret Busby.[54][55][56]

In October 2021, Emecheta's second novel, Second Class Citizen, was reissued as a Penguin Modern Classic,[57][58] as was In the Ditch in 2023.[59]

Works

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Novels

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Autobiography

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Children's/Young adults' books

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Plays

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Articles and shorter writings

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  • Introduction and comments to Our Own Freedom, photographs by Maggie Murray; 1981[65][66]
  • The Black Scholar, November–December 1985, p. 51.
  • "Feminism with a small 'f'!" in Kirsten Holst Petersen (ed.), Criticism and Ideology: Second African Writers' Conference, Stockholm 1988, Uppsala: Scandinanvian Institute of African Studies, 1988, pp. 173–181.
  • Essence magazine, August 1990, p. 50.
  • The New York Times Book Review, 29 April 1990.
  • Publishers Weekly, 16 February 1990, p. 73; reprinted 7 February 1994, p. 84.
  • World Literature Today, Autumn 1994, p. 867.

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Busby, Margaret (3 February 2017). "Buchi Emecheta obituary". The Guardian.
  2. ^ "Buchi Emecheta interview | Civil Rights | women's rights | Today | 1975". Thames TV. Retrieved 16 November 2024 – via YouTube.
  3. ^ Dawson, Ashley, "Beyond Imperial Feminism: Buchi Emecheta's London Novels and Black British Women's Emancipation", in Mongrel Nation: Diasporic Culture and the Making of Postcolonial Britain, University of Michigan Press, 2007, p. 117.
  4. ^ a b "Buchi Emecheta | Biography, Books, & Facts". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 9 May 2019.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Ray, Mohit K., ed. (2007). The Atlantic Companion to Literature in English. Atlantic Publishers & Dist. p. 164. ISBN 9788126908325.
  6. ^ a b c d e f Ross, Robert L., ed. (1999). Colonial and Postcolonial Fiction: An Anthology. Psychology Press. p. 319. ISBN 9780815314318.
  7. ^ a b c d e f g Olendorf, Donna, ed. (1991). Something about the Author (illustrated ed.). Gale Research International, Limited. p. 59. ISBN 9780810322769.
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Sleeman, Elizabeth (2001). The International Who's Who of Women 2002 (revised ed.). Psychology Press. p. 161. ISBN 9781857431223.
  9. ^ "Buchi Emecheta, hero". February 2023.
  10. ^ a b Onwordi, Sylvester (31 January 2017). "Remembering my mother Buchi Emecheta, 1944–2017". New Statesman. Retrieved 16 November 2024.
  11. ^ A Study Guide for Buchi Emecheta's 'The Joys of Motherhood'. Gale Cengage Learning. 2016. ISBN 9781410350268.
  12. ^ "Culture stars who died in 2017: from Doreen Keogh to Bruce Forsyth : Buchi Emecheta". The Daily Telegraph. 26 January 2017. Retrieved 28 January 2017.
  13. ^ a b A Study Guide for Buchi Emecheta's "The Bride Price". Gale, Cengage Learning. 2016. ISBN 9781410342034.
  14. ^ Williams, Benecia L. (Fall 1997). "Emecheta, Buchi | Biography". Postcolonial Studies @ Emory. Emory University. Updated May 2017.
  15. ^ "Buchi Emecheta Essay". eNotes.com.
  16. ^ Jussawalla, Feroza F., Reed Way Dasenbrock, "Buchi Emecheta", Interviews with Writers of the Post-colonial World, University Press of Mississippi, 1992, p. 84.
  17. ^ a b c d e f g h i Kean, Danuta (26 January 2017). "Buchi Emecheta, pioneering Nigerian novelist, dies aged 72". The Guardian. Retrieved 28 January 2017.
  18. ^ Adeleye-Fayemi, Bisi, "LOUD WHISPERS: The First Class Citizen (Buchi Emecheta 1944-2017)", Above Whispers, 18 February 2017.
  19. ^ Emecheta, Buchi, Head Above Water, p. 5, quoted in Stephen Jantuah Boakye, "Suspense Strategies in Buchi Emecheta's Head Above Water", Language in India, Vol. 13:4, April 2013. ISSN 1930-2940.
  20. ^ Contemporary Authors: Volume 126. Cengage Gale. 2004. p. 115. ISBN 9780787667184.
  21. ^ a b "Buchi Emecheta: Nigerian author who championed girls dies aged 72". BBC News. 26 January 2017. Retrieved 28 January 2017.
  22. ^ British Book News. National Book League. 1986.
  23. ^ "Buchi Emecheta - Literature". literature.britishcouncil.org. Retrieved 24 May 2018.
  24. ^ Busby, Margaret, "Buchi Emecheta", Daughters of Africa, London: Jonathan Cape, 1992, p. 656.
  25. ^ "Buchi EMECHETA (Nigeria)", L'AFRIQUE ECRITE AU FEMININ | Les auteures anglophones.
  26. ^ "A Life well lived – Buchi Emecheta's life in novels", The Guardian (Nigeria), 26 January 2017.
  27. ^ Society and Solitude (2 ed.). University Press of America. 1997. p. 241. ISBN 9780761801290.
  28. ^ Fraser, C. Gerald (2 June 1990). "Writer, Her Dream Fulfilled, Seeks to Link Two Worlds". The New York Times.
  29. ^ International Who's Who of Authors and Writers 2004 (revised ed.). Psychology Press. 2003. p. 162. ISBN 9781857431797.
  30. ^ The Council of the Caine Prize for African Writing, "Tribute to Buchi Emecheta (1944–2017)", Caine Prize blog, 1 February 2017.
  31. ^ Adesanya, Femi, "Nigerian Literary Icon, Buchi Emecheta Has Died", Information Nigeria, 25 January 2017.
  32. ^ Amoia, Alba, and Bettina Liebowitz Knapp, Multicultural Writers Since 1945: An A-to-Z Guide, Greenwood Press, 2004, p. 26.
  33. ^ a b c d e "Buchi Emecheta 1944–", Concise Major 21st Century Writers , encyclopedia.com.
  34. ^ Emecheta, Buchi, "Head Above Water", Granta 7: Best of Young British Novelists | Essays & Memoir, 1 March 1983.
  35. ^ Levy, Andrea (18 September 2004), "Made in Britain. To celebrate the impact of their different perspectives, 50 writers of Caribbean, Asian and African descent gathered to be photographed. Andrea Levy reports on a great day for literature", The Guardian.
  36. ^ Le Gendre, Kevin (17 October 2004). "Books: A great day for a family get together Who are the movers and shakers in black British writing? And can they all fit on one staircase?". The Independent on Sunday.
  37. ^ Jagne, Siga Fatima, and Pushpa Naidu Parekh (eds), Buchi Emecheta biography, Postcolonial African Writers: A Bio-bibliographical Critical Sourcebook, Routledge, 1998, p. 149.
  38. ^ "Vlog: British-Nigerian author's books set for February 2018 revamp". msbwrites.co.uk. 8 July 2017. Retrieved 22 June 2019.
  39. ^ Onwordi, Sylvester (20 November 2017). "Buchi Emecheta Foundation and Omenela Press created to Preserve a Legacy". KTravula.com. Retrieved 16 November 2024.
  40. ^ "Celebrating Buchi Emecheta" Archived 22 June 2019 at the Wayback Machine, Royal African Society
  41. ^ "Celebrating Buchi Emecheta – February Event" Archived 9 March 2021 at the Wayback Machine. Buchi Emecheta website.
  42. ^ Cobbinah, Angela (19 February 2018). "Buchi Emechata: keeping her legacy alive". Angela Cobbinah.
  43. ^ Ezeigbo, Akachi, "Celebrating Buchi Emecheta in London a year after", The Guardian (Nigeria), 11 February 2018.
  44. ^ Cobbinah, Angela, "How African writer gave women and girls a voice", Camden New Journal, 16 February 2018.
  45. ^ Hampson, Laura; Gareth Richman (9 August 2018). "20 of the most significant women in history". Evening Standard.
  46. ^ "100 Women Who Changed the World: the results", History Extra, 9 August 2018.
  47. ^ "Women of Camden – How a football kit became a work of art", London Post, 5 March 2019.
  48. ^ Adekunle, "Google doodle celebrates Buchi Emecheta 75th posthumous birthday", Vanguard, 21 July 2019.
  49. ^ "Buchi Emecheta's 75th Birthday". Google. 21 July 2019.
  50. ^ Perrone, Alessio, "Buchi Emecheta: Google Doodle celebrates prolific British-Nigerian author", The Independent, 21 July 2019.
  51. ^ Mackrell, Daniel, "Who is Buchi Emecheta and why is she today's Google Doodle?", Metro, 21 July 2019.
  52. ^ "Google Doodle celebrates Buchi Emecheta on 75th posthumous birthday", The Punch (Nigeria), 21 July 2019.
  53. ^ "Google Doodle: 5 tins to sabi about Buchi Emecheta", BBC News, Pidgin, 21 July 2019.
  54. ^ "Buchi Emecheta Space Opening and Present Futures Exhibition", Goldsmiths Students' Union, 23 October 2019.
  55. ^ Gabi-Williams, Olatoun, "When Goldsmiths College honoured Buchi Emecheta", The Guardian (Nigeria), 24 November 2019.
  56. ^ "Celebrating Buchi Emecheta". Library blog. Goldsmiths University of London. 29 November 2019. Retrieved 12 February 2024.
  57. ^ Self, John (31 October 2021). "Second-Class Citizen by Buchi Emecheta review – fresh and timeless". The Observer.
  58. ^ Buchi Emecheta | Second-Class Citizen. Penguin Books Limited. 7 October 2021. Retrieved 23 August 2022.
  59. ^ Peirson-Hagger, Ellen (4 September 2023). "In the Ditch by Buchi Emecheta review – 'a documentary novel' from the 1970s". The Observer.
  60. ^ Sougou, Omar (2002). Writing Across Cultures: Gender Politics and Difference in the Fiction of Buchi Emecheta. Rodopi. p. 198. ISBN 9789042012981.
  61. ^ Khan, Naseem, and Ferdinand Dennis (eds), Voices of the Crossing: The Impact of Britain on Writers from Asia, the Caribbean and Africa, London: Serpent's Tail, 2000, ISBN 9781852425838. Via Google Books.
  62. ^ Jackson, Tommie Lee (2001). An Invincible Summer: Female Diasporean Authors. Africa World Press. p. 101. ISBN 9780865438231.
  63. ^ a b Malik, Sarita, "Black TV Writers", BFI ScreenOnline.
  64. ^ Lindfors, Bernth; Sander, Reinhard (1992). Twentieth-century Caribbean and Black African Writers. Gale Research Inc. p. 159. ISBN 9780810375949.
  65. ^ Our Own Freedom, Sheba Feminist Publishers, 1981, ISBN 9780907179092.
  66. ^ Umeh, Marie, ed. (1996). Emerging Perspectives on Buchi Emecheta (illustrated ed.). Africa World Press. p. xxiv. ISBN 9780865434554.

Further reading

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Selected tributes and obituaries

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Scholia has a topic profile for Buchi Emecheta.
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