Click here for Soul Survivors
Click here for The Slave Girl.
Click here for Second Class Citizen.
London-based Nigerian novelist Buchi Emecheta OBE, author of over 20 novels including The Slave Girl and Second Class Citizen, talks to Zhana about her experience.
Z – How and why did you start writing?
BE – I had many children close together. I thought I would be able to combine them with work, but I couldn’t. And then, I had so many things I wanted to say. I had to complain to somebody. I didn’t have African friends. They go about blaming you about your marriage or whatever is going wrong for you. Maybe because I am a woman. People blame you first. If you are a survivor, they say, ‘She is doing this, she is doing that’.
The newspapers were all white. They said, “We can put this together as a book”. A few weeks ago, I went to the funeral of a Black man I used to know. So I saw most of the men I knew at that time. I used to show them my papers. And they are still the same men. They would not even say anything to give me courage, “okay, continue”, no. So I had to show it to a Canadian. He said, “This is very good, even though it is written in longhand”. He was working in the library where I was based. He said, “You know, only you could have written that”. When you are young, you need somebody to tell you that.
Then I showed it to my husband and he burned it. He just burned the book. So I had to start all over again. I started really writing when I left him.
After I wrote Second Class Citizen and The Bride Price, I wrote The Slave Girl. My mother told me so many stories. The stories she heard while she was growing up were about slavery. She did not know the importance of those things.
Even though slavery had ended outside, it was still going on inside the country. So she did not know she was living the life of a slave. Her brother actually sold her to a business woman and left her there. He did not know that, when the woman died 10 or 15 years later, the girl would come back. This business woman was related to us. When she died, her daughter wanted to take the girl with her, but she said no, I am going back to my town.
They took everything she had from her. Luckily, we spoke the same language. She did not know she was actually getting the history. So she went back to her own people.
My mother met the son of the business woman and he told her his mother had paid eight pounds for her. So he asked her for the eight pounds back. They didn’t know they were part of a much larger history. The man swore on the Bible that he was owed eight pounds, and he wrote it in African chalk. So they gave him eight pounds and he left. I saw that with my own eyes.
We believed that if you swore on the Bible, if you lied, you would be killed.
So I grew up hearing these stories. Then, when I got married, my mother-in-law told me stories. Her own children would not listen, but I listened.
Even after I left my husband, I still had a connection with my mother-in-law. I built her a house. The land actually belongs to the children, but if you have sons, it is much easier. That is the way that culture works. If you have children, they will share land with you that should have been your husband’s.
Z - In The Slave Girl, you said that “Some marriages are worse than slavery”. What did you mean by that?
BE – That was my mother’s marriage. My father beat my mother. I didn’t like it. They don’t think about it. They just took it. My father just slapped me once. I know how it hurt. These are people who fought the war. I don’t think they even thought about it. To her, it was nothing. She grew up in a house where, being a slave girl more or less, she was used to being beaten. But when I grew up, I realised that woman really suffered.
They would go to church and have to pretend. When people would come and they would argue, they would have to pretend that nothing happened. Those women just took all those things for granted. I know Nigerian people would not like me to say this, but it’s true. It is still going on.
Z – Not just in
BE – It is still going on. I see the women very, very quiet, and when the husband is not there, their faces change. I don’t understand why. Some of these women are women who can really take care of themselves. I say, “Why should I be accepting it? I can feed myself, I can look after my children. Why should I be accepting it?” And they say, “That’s why you find things difficult”. You are supposed to just put up with it. Imagine if I had put up with this man. I wouldn’t have written at all.
He came to see me one day and said “Can we go home?”. If I had gone back with him, I would never have written anything.
Z - How did you find the strength to leave?
BE - I just left. I wasn’t going to take it. I wasn’t going to take it. I got a job and I realised that the income I was earning - I had a good education, I had ‘A’ levels, I could earn. I could pay my rent, why should I stay with him? And then, the day we were leaving, Sunday morning, he would not let me take anything. He would only let me take the clothes we were wearing. I said, I don’t care.
The Methodist people gave me a scholarship. If I did not have the education, I would not have been able to leave my husband. I would tell any girl, you must get your education. That’s your freedom. That’s true anywhere in the world.
Society can make it impossible for a woman.
That’s why I say education is important. Get yourself educated and you can emancipate yourself from any kind of slavery. Education is freedom. You have to keep making mistakes and being aware that one day –
I wrote to the New Statesman and the editor replied. That gave me hope. And then he forgot. I kept sending pieces everywhere and nobody would read them, so I didn’t care anymore. So eventually, the editor of the New Statesman said, “Okay, we’ll see”. You know that short letter that they send you just to dismiss you. By that time, I had already got into university.
So, we started putting the pieces together and that was my first article in the New Statesman. “My flat is leaking and they are doing all this because I am Black” – the usual thing.
I didn’t go to writing school. Nowadays, you have people you can read your work. In those days, as a Black woman, nobody would even believe you were a writer. “What are you writing about? What do you know?” As I said, there is a bit of advantage in playing to be naïve. You know what you know and you know that you know. You keep quiet and you let your work do the talking for you.
Whilst you are doing that, you are learning. And listening to what other people are saying. You can attend conferences and learn. That is important. In the early days, I had so many children, and to take young children – I could only go occasionally. But I used to read a lot. I still read a lot. My bedroom is full of books. I get the Sunday paper and I want to read everything. Then I am ready for the next week.
And I don’t like the way some publishers talked down to me. They did not treat me as an equal. When you are the publisher, you know how rich you are, what you can afford to do, what you cannot afford to do. You don’t have to wait another year to get your money. Publishers can be a form of enslavement.
[When I left my publisher] It was a kind of freedom because I suddenly realised this is what I can do.
Z - In Second Class Citizen, you said that other Nigerians were saying to you, “Don’t you know you’re a second class citizen?”.
BE – Yes, even my husband. All the people who we shared a house with worked in a shirt factory in
It took me two months to get a job. And everybody was saying “Find a job”. I said, “I’m not going to do that”. When they started calling me for interviews, I knew I would eventually get a job.
Then [other Nigerians] said, “How did you know? Who told you?”. This is mental enslavement.
I was not happy with him. I was not really happy until I was expecting my fifth child. I could feed my children, feed myself and take care of myself. I started buying a house. If I had stayed with him, I would not have bought a house.
I didn’t know I was famous. I was just freeing myself from the burden of my marriage.
I can’t stress this enough. Educate yourself. Just keep reading and educate yourself. My son and I were talking about investments and things. He said, “How did you know where to invest?”. I said, “It was in the papers. It’s always in the papers every Sunday. Just keep reading”. Find the type of account that suits you.
Z – A lot of people see you as a role model. You were all alone in a strange country with five children, and you still kept writing.
BE – The thing about writing is that it’s like gambling. All you need is one success. Just one.
Z – What are you working on now?
BE - I have been asked to bring my autobiography, Head above Water, up to date.
Z - What advice would you give to Black writers?
BE – Believe in yourself and get yourself educated. If you have an idea of the area in which you want to write, read more in that area.
What is a Black book? You write about drugs, prostitution? I don’t know anything about that. My work is a bit historical, social, and about women. Instead of writing books I don’t know anything about, I’d better stop.
Copyright © Zhana 2006
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Click here for The Slave Girl.
Click here for Second Class Citizen.
Second Class Citizen pales a lot of academic feminist writing into insignificance. [Emecheta's] is a book that is gripping and authentic, and hard to dispute or laugh off. - The Guardian