The Buchi I know - A Trubute

Tribute to Buchi Emecheta

      At the twilight of my undergraduate career at the university, I proposed three topics for my project as an English language – language stress student. The first was ‘Challenges of Men in Nigerian Family System’, citing Buchi Emecheta’s ‘The Joys of Motherhood’ and Chimamanda Adichie’s ‘Purple Hibiscus’. Secondly, I proposed ‘Bad Leadership and Corruption in Post-Independence Africa’ in Ayi Kwei Amah’s ‘The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born’. Lastly, I proposed to look into ‘Women’s Influence in Politics of Nigeria’ using the works of Ola Rotimi’s ‘Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again’ and Emeka Nwabueze’s ‘Parliament of Vultures’. But my supervisor was to rephrase the first topic to ‘Gender Inequality in Emecheta’s ‘Joys of Motherhood’ and Adichie’s ‘Purple Hibiscus’, while approving same.

      I would not know the reason behind this change and subsequent approval. But I was happy the exercise was going to give me ample opportunity to take a critical insight of the work of an author, not only from my hometown but a woman I have come to admire overtime through her works even though we have not met. I think her first work I encountered was ‘The Bride Price’. I could recall in my tender observation when I came across the name of my town in a book for the first time, I had this narcissist feeling at the time. Subsequent years exposed me to the other of her works like ‘Second-Class Citizen’, ‘The Slave Girl’, ‘The Rape of Shavi’, ‘Destination Biafra’ and eventually ‘The Joys of Motherhood’.

     

Reading any of the works of Buchi Emecheta takes the reader into the author’s world. Although, almost all her works are autobiographical accounts of her personal experiences. Her simple diction reflects contemporary work of arts and the realities of our modern and traditional African society. She preaches womanhood and woman emancipation. The bane of total subjugation from the largely patriarchal society is expressed in her works. These, she relived in a most simplistic and free-minded disposition.

      Buchi was a self made woman and epitomized the strength of a woman in no great measures. She is a model to the girl child education owing to a childhood experience that almost denied her basic education in life. Buchi Emecheta was born as Florence Onyebuchi Emecheta on August 14, 1944 in Lagos.  She has Mid-western Ibo parents who hail from Ibusa in the present Delta State.  She grew up in a colonial family where her father was a railway worker in the 1940s and her mother, a full-time housewife. Her early education saw her through Ladilak School and Reagan Memorial Baptist School in Yaba, Lagos. But the death of her father when she was nine threw a cog in her educational wheel. It was only by dint of divine providence that she was given scholarship to continue her secondary education by the missionaries at Methodist Girls School. Quite earlier, her resilience and ability to convince her father on the numerous benefits of education saw her early tutelage.

      In fulfillment of her life desire as a woman, on concluding her secondary school career at age 16, she got married to a man she had been engaged since she was eleven years old. Her husband, Sylvester Onwordi immediately left to London to further his education.  Buchi joined him in 1962 and bore him five children in six years.  But the marriage was ruled by a lot of problems.  Buchi wrote a lot during her spare time in order to keep her sanity; however, her husband was deeply suspicious of her writing, and he ultimately burnt her first manuscript. At the age of twenty-two, both parties parted ways.  Buchi earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Sociology at the University of London, while she also worked alone to keep her five children. This feat came with a lot of challenges, a carking one at that. At a time, the preference for the welfare of her children became uppermost in her mind and she did not care a hoot about her decision. This was when from 1965 to 1969, Emecheta worked as a library officer for the British Museum in London. From 1969 to 1976 she was a youth worker and sociologist for the Inner London Education Authority, and from 1976 to 1978 she was a community worker.

     She blossomed in her writing career with some notable novels like In the Ditch (1972); Second-class Citizen (1974); The Bride Price (1976); The Joys of Motherhood (1979); Destination Biafra (1982); among others.  She has also written TV plays like A Kind of Marriage and Family Bargain, and children novels.  Some of which are Titch the Cat (1979), The Wrestling Match (1980), etc.

      Buchi Emecheta has published articles like “The Black Scholar”, (November-December 1985), New York Times book review, April 29, 1990; World Literature Today, Autumn 1994.  Together with the son, she runs Ogwugwu Afor Publishing Company under which most of her works have been published. She won the Jack Campbell Award in 1979 with her novel, The Slave Girl (1977).  She also has the Arts Council of Great Britain between 1982-3.

      Her themes of child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education won her considerable critical acclaim and honours, including an Order of the British Empire in 2005. Emecheta 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." She has been characterized as "the first successful black woman novelist living in Britain after 1948".

     Generally, the life and times of a woman who felt the brunt of life under a most convoluted atmosphere, was crowned with a mixture of sorrow and gladness. Towards the twilight of her life, she was taken to the nursing home, yet her lively disposition of a writer held sway. She was ever lively and always relives memories of her humble beginning and cultural background. She was a lover of culture and never failed to relish in the intrigues of her Ibusa tradition anytime she was in the midst of her people. As a community builder, she was staunch and her advocacy towards the development of her town through the umbrella body of Ibusa Women Community Development Union (IWCDU), London chapter was unparalleled.

       Most of these attributes were what made the thematic carriage in her novels unique. Her style and employment of Igbo proverbs and adages in her works are apt. The mark of which makes a tropical writer. Her works reflects feminism but she vehemently opposed being a feminist. The high themes reflected in ‘The Joys of Motherhood’ gave credence to the book’s recommendation in the school certificate curriculum in Nigeria.

      Buchi classes as one of the authors with the highest number of published novels and highest in the women fold in sub-Saharan Africa. She has indeed set a standard that will be hard to fill. As we celebrate this writer who has impacted in the lives of many with her works, the many comments and accolades pouring out are testimony to this fact. She had a way of mirroring the society through her personal experiences.