SOURCE: “Buchi Emecheta: The Shaping of a Self,” in Komparatistische Hefte, Vol. 8, 1983, pp. 65-78.

In the following essay, Ogunyemi provides an overview of Emecheta's literary career and the major themes in her novels.

Easily the most poignant event in Nigeria's Buchi Emecheta's career as a novelist was her husband's crime in burning her first manuscript, a version of what, rewritten, would become The Bride Price. The manuscript had become an extension of Emecheta authenticating her unacknowledged and unacclaimed breadwinning role vis-à-vis her male dependents. The burning was therefore of great symbolic significance. It represented her husband's destroying what was left of their fragile marital relationship. It represented, in another sense, the immolating of Emecheta, the “second-class citizen,” struggling to free herself from the bonds of her father, her brother, and, most especially, her husband. Her husband was intelligent enough to see the manuscript for what it really...