Buchi Emecheta, in full Florence Onyebuchi Emecheta, is Igbo writer whose novels deal largely with the difficult and unequal role of women in both immigrant and African societies and explore the tension between tradition and modernity.
Emecheta married at age 16, and she emigrated with her husband from Nigeria to London in 1962. She began writing stories based on her life, including the problems she initially encountered in England. These works were first published in New Statesman magazine and were later collected in the novel In the Ditch (1972).
That work was followed by Second-Class Citizen (1974), and both were later included in the single volume Adah’s Story (1983). Those books introduce Emecheta’s three major themes: the quests for equal treatment, self-confidence, and dignity as a woman. Somewhat different in style is Emecheta’s novel Gwendolen (1989; also published as The Family), which addresses the issues of immigrant life in Great Britain, as do Kehinde (1994) and The New Tribe (2000)
