The Nigerian Novelist Buchi Emecheta wrote those books with an Essence of Africanism. The first time we read Desination
Biafra on the early eighties we felt that she was writing about her country (transformance). It was not strange also to complete
reading some of her books on the early ninties and to write to her a warm message and to request translating her books, or
those we already have read to another language. The African Art Essence has its logic in this destiny. And she has got this
African Art Essence that makes the distance emerges into moments of joy, culture and knowledge. We`re coming back to write
about this soon. So take your time for the moment with those tales.
Joys of Motherhood
Product Details:
ISBN:
0807609501
Format: Paperback, 244pp
Pub. Date: January 1980
From the Publisher:
This story of a young mother's struggles in 1950s Lagos is a powerful commentary on polygamy,
patriarchy, and women's changing roles in urban Nigeria.
Joys of Motherhood
Bride Price
Product Details: ISBN: 080760951X Format: Paperback, 168pp Pub. Date: January 1980
Annotation: A story about a Nigerian girl who is allowed to finish her education because a diploma will enhance her bride
price, who then rebels against traditional marriage customs.
Bride Price
Slave Girl
Slave Girl
Product Details:
ISBN: 0807609528 Format: Paperback, 179pp Pub. Date: January 1980 
Second Class Citizen
Product Details:
ISBN: 0807610666 Format: Paperback, 175pp Pub. Date: February 1983
Annotation: A Nigerian girl defies traditional tribal customs by attending school, marrying a student, and following him
to London. From the Publisher: A poignant story of a resourceful Nigerian woman who overcomes strict tribal domination of
women and countless setbacks to achieve an independent life for herself and her children. 
Second Class Citizen
Double Yoke
Product Details:
ISBN: 080761128X Format: Paperback, 167pp Pub. Date: July 1985
Annotation:
A tragic story about the entrapment of a woman in a society that places value on a woman only after she begets children
for the propagation of her husband's lineage. From the Publisher: Set on the campus of a Nigerian university, Double Yoke
tells the story of two undergraduates who must confront the conflicting demands of tradition and modernity. While Nko pursues
an education despite the resistance of those who feel a woman's identity is assumed in traditional marriage, Ete Kamba's love
for her is severely tested as he is himself locked into the rigid attitudes from which Nko is attempting to break free. Nko
must further contend with unscrupulous professors who would take advantage of her tenuous role as a woman in a male-dominated
environment. As the author candidly portrays the status of women in emerging African nations, the choices facing Ete Kamba
and Nko are neither clearcut nor perfect. In Double Yoke, Buchi Emecheta faces them head on. 
080761128X:Product Link on Barnes & Noble.com.
The Family
Product Details:
ISBN: 0807612502 Format: Paperback, 240pp Pub. Date: April 1990
Annotation:
A Jamaican girl hoins her parents in London at age eleven and makes formidable adjustments and choices to overcome the
limitations of her family life.
From The Critics:
Publisher's Weekly: Although her characters speak in authentic patois and authoritatively convey the grim travails of a
dysfunctional emigre family in England, Emecheta's novel is sapped by polemic and an overkill of disaster. When her mother
joins her father in London, Gwendolen is left behind in Jamaica, where she is sexually abused by a male friend of her grandmother;
disclosure of her crime only brings the child resentment and ridicule. Eventually, Gwendolen's parents send for her, and she
arrives in the ``Moder Kontry'' to care for her younger siblings and receive an education. But school is a hardship: ``What
nobody realized was the price her dignity as a person was paying. Those who made society's laws are still a long way from
knowing that Gwendolen's inability to speak or understand one brand of the English language did not automatically condemn
her to be an imbecile. But to keep a school like hers running smoothly and with less friction for all concerned, it was easier
for her to be regarded as one.'' Further humiliations follow when Gwendolen's father molests her, rages when he learns he
is not the first to do so, and eventually impregnates her. A Nigerian native living in England, Emecheta wrote The Joys of
Motherhood. (Mar.)
Library Journal: In Emecheta's latest novel, complex societal, moral, and emotional issues are played out through the life
of young Gwendolen Brillianton. We meet her at age six in a Jamaican mountain village as her father emigrates to London and
say good-bye at a triumphant age 16 after she's fought for survival and identity through a sequence of cruel events that include
subjugation, rape, and incest. Her family's need to escape economic poverty has led to a new poverty--a moral malaise within
a dissociated nuclear family. However awkward the narrative structure may appear, Emecheta is here exploring new territory.
Her narrator, unlike its dispassionate Western counterpart, takes an active role by commenting on events and stating opinions--a
practice evolving out of the oral tradition of the African griot that is also reminiscent of the Greek chorus in Western literary
tradition. A native of Nigeria who has lived in England since 1962, Emecheta is the author of several novels, including The
Rape of Shavi ( LJ 3/1/85). Her newest is a fine addition to any library.-- Veronica Mitchell, New York. 
0807612502:Product Link on Barnes & Noble.com.
Head Above Water
Product Details:
ISBN: 0435909932 Format: Paperback, 229pp Pub. Date: February 1994
From the Publisher:
Buchi Emecheta's autobiography spans the transition from a tribal childhood in the African bush to life in North London
as an internationally acclaimed writer.
From The Critics:
Publisher's Weekly: The Nigerian novelist's anecdotal autobiography spans her childhood in the Nigerian bush and her present
life in London as an internationally recognized author. (Mar.) 
0435909932:Product Link on Barnes & Noble.com.
The Joys of Mtherhood Product Details: ISBN: 043590972X Format: Paperback, 224pp Pub. Date: February 1994 From the Publisher:
This story of a young mother's struggles in 1950s Lagos is a powerful commentary on polygamy, patriarchy, and women's changing
roles in urban Nigeria. 
The Joys of Motherhood
Kehinde
Product Details:
ISBN: 0435909851 Format: Paperback, 144pp Pub. Date: February 1994
From the Publisher:
Kehinde and her husband Albert had always intended to return to Nigeria. When the opportunity arises, Kehinde realises
she is reluctant to leave London and the independence she has enjoyed there. Albert, longing for the prosperity and status
that will be his in Nigeria, is determined not to be thwarted in his plans. He thinks that it is his wife's duty to obey him,
and forces her to make terrible choices. Kehinde, plagued with guilt, is led on an unexpected path by the spirit of her dead
twin.
Synopsis: Kehinde is a Nigerian woman, unsure of herself, not quite certain she has the right to be happy.
From The Critics:
Publisher's Weekly: With her usual lucidity and in a lilting yet plain-spoken style, Emecheta ( Head Above Water ) tells
of a woman's search for independence. Albert and Kehinde Okolo have been living in London for 18 years when Albert's sisters
begin pressuring him to return to Nigeria. Kehinde resists the idea: their two children have never been to Nigeria and she
has recently learned that she is pregnant. At Albert's insistence she has an abortion. Albert then leaves, and Kehinde remains
behind to sell the house. After Albert sends for the children, Kehinde is lonely at first but manages on her own. Eventually,
she begins to feel like a ``half-person'' without Albert, gives up her job and departs for Nigeria. On her arrival, she is
horrified to learn that, during their two-year separation, Albert has taken a second wife. Kehinde decides to return to England
and establish a life for herself there. Kehinde's troubled relationship to Albert and her children are parallelled in her
recollections of a difficult childhood: Kehinde's twin was stillborn and her mother died at birth, prompting the family to
believe that she had eaten her sister. It's a story that she at first accepts, but as she becomes her own woman she rejects
its superstitious quality.
Library Journal: An Anglo-Nigerian with a large British following, Emecheta has written over ten novels (The Family, LJ
3/1/90), a number of juvenile works, teleplays, and an autobiography, Head Above Water (Kayode, 1991). In many of these works,
she clearly portrays the sociological and personal difficulties of welfare mothers in London, drawing heavily on her own personal
experience. Here, Kehinde and Albert Okolo have been living in London as a married couple for 18 years when Albert returns
to Nigeria, under pressure from his family. After two years of struggling alone in London, Kehinde returns to Nigeria to discover
that Albert has taken a second wife, despite promises of monogamy when they were first married. Unable to adjust to the new
family situation, she returns to London and begins a new life for herself. Kehinde's outer show of independence is mirrored
by her inner life; she becomes strong enough to quiet the voice of her stillborn twin, who has spoken to her and influenced
her actions throughout her life. A good addition to most collections, especially those offering pan-African materials.-Marie
F. Jones, Muskingum Coll. Lib., New Concord, Ohio.
School Library Journal: After living in London for many years, Kehinde's husband Albert decides that they will return to
Nigeria. He strongly urges her to abort the baby she is carrying, and she does so with great apprehension. He takes their
two children and leaves her to sell the house and tie up loose ends at her prestigious bank job. He then returns to their
homeland, where he takes a new young wife and has a child by her. When Kehinde arrives in Nigeria and discovers the truth,
she is pressured by her own and Albert's female relatives to play the role of the subservient wife. Her sense of reason wins
out, and readers will applaud her decisions at the end of this short, honest novel.-- (Ginny Ryder, R.E. Lee High School,
Springfield, VA) Kehinde
Sacred Fire: After almost twenty years living in London, Albert Okolos is forcing his wife, Kehinde, to return to their
native land, Nigeria. Albert is tired of the democratic nature of London, "Stupid country, where you need your wife's money
to make ends meet." He longs for the status and prosperity he will obtain in Nigeria and is determined to move his family
back to the "home" neither he nor Kehinde remembers clearly and their two children know not at all. "After eighteen years,
he pined for sunshine, freedom, easy friendship, warmth. He wanted to go home to show off his new life style, his material
success."Kehinde begins a journey of self-discovery when she leaves her successful career and her London home to follow Albert
to Nigeria, where he has been for a year. She arrives to find that she has been relegated to a marginal position in his life,
that he has taken a second wife who is already pregnant by him. Kehinde must pull herself and her life together and learn
about indepen- dence and strength from the least likely of sources _herself. Like Kehinde, Emecheta was born in Nigeria. At
seventeen, she married, had a child, and moved with her husband to London. At twenty-two, she left him and finished a sociology
degree while supporting her five children. Part fiction, part autobiography, Kehinde is a clever and insightful story about
family, country, roles, and responsibility that clearly illustrates how things are rarely valued until they are lost. Moonlight
Bride Product Details: ISBN: 0807610631 Format: Paperback, 77pp Pub. Date: February 1983 
Moonlight Bride
Product Details:
ISBN: 0807610631
Format: Paperback, 77pp
Pub. Date: February 1983
Moonlight Bride
The Rape of Shavi
Product Details: ISBN: 0807611182 Format: Paperback, 178pp Pub. Date: November 1990 
The Rape of Shavi
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