Second Class Citizen
Place on List:
II. Literary Genre: The
Novel
3.
How is political conflict directly represented in novels?
Buchi
Emecheta. Second
Class Citizen.
(1974, Nigeria)
Supporting References:
- Biography: http://literature.britishcouncil.org/buchi-emecheta
- Birch, Dinah. "Emecheta, Buchi." The Oxford Companion to English Literature. : Oxford University Press, 2009. Oxford Reference. 2009. Date Accessed 16 Aug. 2013
The article offers
an overview of Emecheta and less a discussion on the above-cited
text.
“Emecheta,
Buchi (1944– ) Nigerian novelist, born near Lagos,
the daughter of a railway porter. She left her country at the age of
20 with four small children and moved to London. She obtained a
degree in sociology at the University of London and wrote
autobiographical novels, In the Ditch (1972) and its sequel,
Second‐Class Citizen (1974), published in one volume as
Adah's Story (1983). Succeeding novels, The Bride Price
(1976), The Slave Girl (1977), and The Joys of
Motherhood (1979), deal with the position of women in Nigerian
society, contesting stereotypical and idealized images of femininity,
though Emecheta is wary of being categorized as a feminist. In 1980
she returned to Nigeria as a visiting professor at Calabar
University, an experience which influenced her novel Double Yoke
(1982). Also published in 1982 was Destination Biafra, a
fictional account of the Nigerian civil wars which draws on the
experiences of family and friends. Gwendolen (1989) focuses
on the subject of child abuse and cultural isolation; The Rape of
Shavi (1983) and The New Tribe (2000) engage with the
politics of diasporic experience. Emecheta's autobiography, Head
above Water, was published in 1986; she also writes for
children.”
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