Buchi Emecheta
Florence Onyebuchi "Buchi" Emecheta OBE (21 July 1944 – 25 January 2017) was a Nigerian-born novelist, based in the UK from 1962, who also wrote plays and an autobiography, as well as works for children. She was the author of more than 20 books, including Second Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). Most of her early novels were published by Allison and Busby, where her editor was Margaret Busby.
Buchi Emecheta | |
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Born | Florence Onyebuchi Emecheta 21 July 1944 |
Died | 25 January 2017 72) London, England | (aged
Nationality | Nigerian |
Education | Methodist Girls' School, Yaba, Lagos; University of London |
Occupation | Writer |
Notable work |
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Awards | Jock Campbell Prize (1978); Best of Young British Novelists (1983) |
Emecheta's themes of child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education gained recognition from critics and honours. She once described her stories as "stories of the world, where women face the universal problems of poverty and oppression, and the longer they stay, no matter where they have come from originally, the more the problems become identical." Her works explore the tension between tradition and modernity. She has been characterized as "the first successful black woman novelist living in Britain after 1948".