One of Africa’s most influential female writers, Buchi Emecheta, passed on last week in London at the age of 72. Unarguably, she was one of the continent’s most prolific contemporary women writers. Her death is a big loss to African literature in general, and women writing in particular.
She will be sorely missed by avid readers of African literature and women’s writing. Emecheta, who wrote about the women condition in Africa and the Diaspora, was preoccupied mostly with the liberation of women from oppression. She challenged the negative characterisation of females in dominant African literary works by creating strong and resourceful female characters that triumphed over adverse conditions.
In her works, she gave women the mouth to speak and a pedestal to stand. She wrote about empowered and enchanting female characters. There is no doubt that she championed women and girls’ rights in most of her works.
In her introduction in Emerging Perspectives on Buchi Emecheta, Marie Umeh writes that “Emecheta’s treatment of sexual politics in her society is grounded in Igbo women’s protest against retrogressive cultural norms, such as clitoridectomy, women as baby machines, the prioritising of boys at the expense of girls, and widow inheritance.”
Umeh also asserts that Buchi Emecheta raises the consciousness of many of her readers on the need to move toward genuine power sharing between males and females, “so that living together may be fun and empowering rather than cruel and crippling.” Although she claimed to be a feminist with a small ‘f’, her writings are womanist and rooted in African culture. She believed in the welfare of women, men and children.
Her Joys of Motherhood, which title is taken from her literary mother, Flora Nwapa’s Efuru, is both a critic and a celebration of African womanhood. Although Nwapa was the first female writer to put women at the centre of African literature, Emecheta expanded the scope with assertive and, at times, militant female characters.
Her three autobiographical novels, In the Ditch, Second-Class Citizen and Head Above Water are regarded as an Igbo woman’s response to life in Britain. Since relocating to Britain in 1960, Emechata has written more than 20 novels, including her war novel, Destination Biafra, based on the Nigerian Civil War of 1967-70, and The Bride Price.
Emecheta’s death has attracted sterling tributes from many Nigerian writers and critics. To Prof. Niyi Osundare, “The world has just suffered the sad, irreplaceable loss of a woman who willed herself into significance; a writer who literally wrote each work with blood from her veins. Buchi Emecheta pressed the abundance of life’s challenges into the richness of art, producing some of the most frequently cited works in contemporary African literature.”
Prof. Femi Osofisan described her as “one of the best, though she’s been in London almost all her life, which is why many young Nigerians may not know who she was but she remained one of the best and her work will continue to speak about her.”
To Prof. Akachi Ezeigbo, “Emecheta was one of the most prolific writers from Africa, and certainly the most prolific female novelist from the continent.
“She was the most vocal feminist writer who brought African women’s experience and condition to global attention. In her writing, she focused critically on some of the cultural traditions and societal practices that subjugated women in both her Ibuza homeland and Nigeria.” In his tribute, the Delta State governor, Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa, described her passage as a monumental loss to the country and the literary world.
Born on July 21, 1944 as Florence Onyebuchi Emecheta in Lagos to parents from Ibusa, Delta State, Nigeria, she started school at Ladilak School, Yaba, Lagos in 1951. She was at Reagan Memorial Baptist School, Yaba, Lagos in 1953 and Methodist Girls Secondary School, Yaba, Lagos, 1954.
She published In the Ditch in 1972 and received her B.Sc Sociology in 1974 from London University. She also got her Masters degree in Philosophy from London University in 1976.
She won several awards including The Daughter of Mark Twain Award for Second-Class Citizen; New Statesman/Jack Campbell Award for The Slave Girl, Sunrise Award for the Best Black Writer in the World, also for The Slave Girl; Best British Writer’s Award for The Joys of Motherhood.
We commiserate with the Emecheta family, the literary community, the government and people of Delta State, and the Federal Government on the loss of this great writer. May God grant her eternal repose.