Buchi Emecheta’s Second Class Citizen

One of the female authors I find fascinating and her story line interesting, is Buchi Emecheta with over 20 books to her name.
Born in Lagos in 1944 to Jeremy and Alice Emecheta, she spent her formative childhood schooling in Lagos. She got married at the age of 16, got a scholarship to an all girls academy and passed with flying colours before she eventually got a job .
She later moved to the United Kingdom with her children to join her husband.
Her initial works, all are autobiographical in nature and focus on three major themes; equal treatment, self confidence and dignity.
Her novel, Second Class Citizen, which I cannot stop reading, has the narrative story telling of a voice with sophistry that has cooling effect that can keep someone awake all night and which you would not even like the story to be concluded but to tell the narrator that you want him or her; “can we continue the next day?”
The novel, Second Class Citizen is basically an autobiography but the flow of the language and how it is presented is never boring. A reader will hardly put it down once the reading starts.
Second Class Citizen is a novel of determination, independent-thinking and the experience the female folks pass through in a traditional African society. It also portrays the undue influence the larger African society plays in the lives of men and how they should relate with their families.
Adah, the main character in the novel is described as a person of strong will, independent-minded, stubborn ,ambitious and a loving person, who is also ahead of her counterparts in her drive to excel in life.
But all this comes at a cost in that she will be misunderstood, men see her as too strong- willed.
I think that her role model of a man is her father. In the novel, you hardly see any man  that is really up to the standard of her late father.
The expectations, coupled with the culture shock and discrimination Adah faces are quite profound in some of the chapters and they go a long way in opening her eyes to the realities of life that tribalism and racism are just two words describing one and the same thing…  we might be human beings but we are different.
Second Class Citizen also has the flavour of taking a reader  a little bit back to the colonial period when some people’s dream of acquiring modern education was successful while others had theirs thwarted due to either carelessness or misplaced priorities.
The writer in the narrative reveals to us that growing up as a child without the father especially in an African household is full of setbacks in a colonial setting or immediately after independence  and  it takes sheer will to pass through all the hurdles.
Buchi is a gifted story-teller and despite the fact that some critics might see her as too harsh on the male image, the fact remains that her writings belong to a class of their own.

By: Tonye Ikiroma-Owiye