A portrait of Buchi Emecheta against a collaged background

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Features

My mother, the pioneer: how Buchi Emecheta captured immigrant life in 1970s London

The Joys of Motherhood

'A scorching portrayal of a woman's life . . . the female, feminist counterpart to Things Fall Apart' Bernardine Evaristo 
 
'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?' 
 
There is no greater honour for a woman in an Ibo village than to have children - especially sons. Unable to conceive in her first marriage, Nnu Ego is sent away to a new husband in the city of Lagos, where she finally succeeds in becoming a mother. But things are changing, and a war that unfolds thousands of miles away threatens her family's fortunes and her entire way of life. In a world where motherhood is everything, what will be left for her at the end of it all? 
 
'Sparkling intelligence and a certain kind of honest, lived, intimate insight into working-class colonial Nigeria' Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I read and admired all her books ... The book I adored most was The Joys of Motherhood, for its sparkling intelligence and a certain kind of honest, lived, intimate insight into working-class colonial Nigeria

A scorching portrayal of a woman's life in pre-independence Nigeria . . . should be up there as the female, feminist counterpart to Chinua Achebe's celebrated and widely taught novel Things Fall Apart

A rich, multilayered work of fiction, full of drama and written with deceptive simplicity

Writes with subtlety, power, and abundant compassion

Fresh and relevant . . . expertly and sensitively shines a light on the distortion of traditional values

Buchi Emecheta (1944-2017) was born in Lagos, Nigeria and moved to London in 1961. A writer and academic, she wrote sixteen novels, three children's stories and numerous articles and television plays.

Second-Class Citizen

'Fresh, timeless ... a lively work of art' Observer 
 
'Buchi Emecheta was the foremother of black British women's writing . . . powerful fictions written from and about our lives' Bernardine Evaristo 
 
'Most dreams, as all dreamers know quite well, do have setbacks. Adah's dream was no exception, for hers had many' 
 
They nicknamed Adah 'the Igbo tigress' at school in Nigeria, she was so fearless. Now she has moved to London to join her husband, and is determined to succeed. But her welcome from 1960's England - and the man she married - is a cold one. Providing for her growing family, struggling to survive and negotiating everyday injustices along the way, Adah still resolves that she will never give up her dream of becoming a writer. 
 
'Bold, brave, defiant ... its exploration of blackness, the white gaze, and the development of the main character Adah's sense of self is extremely powerful' Gal-dem

The foremother of black British women's writing . . . her early books, in particular, were powerful fictions written from and about our lives

Haunting . . . the trials and tribulations in Adah's personal life . . . are set against the endemic racism (and to only a slightly lesser degree, the sexism) she has to contend with in sixties London

Emecheta's prose has a shimmer of originality, of English being reinvented ... issues of survival lie inherent in her material and give her tales weight

A harrowing immigrant story of racism and domestic violence - it shook me to the core when I first read it . . . Buchi Emecheta was a writer who struggled against all kinds of odds to produce novels that are now lodged deep in the DNA of almost every African writer

Bold, brave, defiant ... its exploration of blackness, the white gaze, and the development of the main character Adah's sense of self is extremely powerful and continues to hold great relevance in contemporary British society

Buchi Emecheta re-ignited the rich place of women at the heart of African literature . . . without her the current strong generation of women writers, who write well and fearlessly, would not exist

Emecheta revealed the thoughts and aspirations of her countrywomen, shaped by a patriarchal culture but stirred by the modern promise of freedom and self-definition

Emecheta's women do not simply lie down and die ... always there is resistance, a challenge to fate, a need to renegotiate the terms of the uneasy peace that exists between them and accepted traditions

Buchi Emecheta

Sad, sonorous, occasionally hilarious, an extraordinary first novel

Striking . . . a world rarely brought to life on the page with the candor and intensity of firsthand experience . . . brings sexism and classism into equal focus

Bold, brave, defiant, and determined, Buchi Emecheta graced the world with her first novel in 1972

A pioneer among Black female novelists . . . Emecheta writes with an appealingly jocular tone . . . In the Ditch remains politically pertinent as well as entertaining . . . its charm comes not only from its basis in fact, but also in its author&rsquo;s skill for capturing the truest quirks of human character

Buchi Emecheta was evidently extraordinarily gifted as well as extremely determined... Adah's story is told with empathy and humour. This is about survival in the face of almost insurmountable odds... In The Ditch is [also] a powerful critique of a stigmatising system, rife with contradictions and replete with negative stereotypes about people who are so urgently in need of support

Adah's life in London has not turned out as she had imagined when she moved from Nigeria to join her husband. Now that she is a single mother living in a dank, crumbling council state in North London with her five young children, her options are very limited indeed. The more Adah learns about the complicated system that keeps her family safe but trapped in poverty, the more determined she is to escape the confines of her new world and create a better life for her family. 
 
In the Ditch, Emecheta's debut novel, began life as a column in the New Statesman. Drawing on first-hand experience, an unflinching eye for detail and unfailing sense of humour, Emecheta paints a moving picture of life for the most vulnerable families in British society: the difficult choices and false hopes as well as the unexpected friendships that prove essential for survival.

Buchi Emecheta

Books by Buchi Emecheta

Articles featuring Buchi Emecheta

My mother, the pioneer: how Buchi Emecheta captured immigrant life in 1970s London

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