Buchi Emecheta is a Nigerian-born author best known for her novels that address the difficulties facing modern African women forced into traditional and subservient roles. Emecheta’s heroines often challenge the restrictive customs imposed on them and aspire to economic and social independence. Although some critics have categorized Emecheta’s works as feminist in nature, Emecheta rejects the label, stating, “I have not committed myself to the cause of African women only. I write about Africa as a whole.”
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 characterised as “the first successful black woman novelist living in Britain after 1948”.
Emecheta’s books were on the national curricula of several African countries. She was known for championing women and girls in her writing, though famously rejected description as a feminist.
