Second Class Citizen

Adah's desire to write is pitted against the forces of an egotistical and unfeeling husband and a largely indifferent white society. Buchi Emecheta OBE (1944 – 2017) was a Nigerian-born British novelist. Buchi Emecheta was born in Lagos, Nigeria. Her father, a railway worker died when she was very young. At the age of 10, she won a scholarship to the Methodist Girls’ High School, but by the time she was 17 she had left school, married and had a child. She accompanied her husband to London, where he was a student. Aged 22, she finally left him and took an honours degree in sociology while supporting her five children and writing in the early morning. Her first book, In the Ditch detailed her experience as a poor single parent in London. It was followed by Second Class Citizen, The Bride Price, The Slave Girl, which was awarded the Jock Campbell Award, The Joys of Motherhood, Destination Biafra, Naira Power, Double Yoke, Gwendolen, The Rape of Shavi and Kehinde, as well as a number of children’s books and a play A Kind of Marriage, produced for the BBC Television. Her autobiography Head Above Water, appeared in 1986 to much acclaim.