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Buchi Emecheta Biography, Age, Early Life, Education, Family, Literary Works And More

Buchi Emecheta Biography
Buchi Emecheta was a Nigerian-born novelist, who lived from 21st July, 1944 to 25th January, 2017.
She wrote plays and an autobiography during her lifetime, as well as published more than 20 books.
We'd be seeing Buchi Emecheta's biography, full name, date of birth, age, early life, family, parents, spouse, children, education, literary works and everything else you'd love to know about her.

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Buchi Emecheta Profile

Before we continue, here's a quick run down on Buchi Emecheta's profile and a few things you'd love to know about him.
Full Name: Florence Onyebuchi "Buchi" Emecheta OBE
Date of birth: 21st July, 1944
Died: 25th January, 2017 (London, United Kingdom)
Age: 72 years
Nationality: Nigeria
Parents: Alice (Okwuekwuhe) Emecheta and Jeremy Nwabudinke
Spouse: Sylvester Onwordi (married 1960)
Children: Sylvester + [three daughters and one son]
Education: University of London
Occupation: Writer
Notable work(s): Second-Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977), The Joys of Motherhood (1979)
Website: http://www.buchiemecheta.co.uk

Buchi Emecheta Biography, Date Of Birth, Early Life, Family, Education, Career, Works

Born on the 21st of July, 1944, Florence Onyebuchi "Buchi" Emecheta OBE is a Nigerian writer who was born in Lagos, Nigeria to Ibo parents - Alice (Okwuekwuhe) Emecheta and Jeremy Nwabudinke.
Her father was a moulder and a railway worker, and due to the gender bias associated with Africans as at that time, she was initially kept at home while her younger brother was sent to school.
Buchi persuaded her parents and convinced them on the benefits of her education, and was eventually sent to an all-girl's missionary school. Her father died when she was just nine, from complications brought by a wound contracted in the swamps of Burma where he had been conscripted to fight for Lord Louis Mountbatten and the remnants of the British Empire.
A year later she received a full scholarship to study at the Methodist Girls' School where she remained until she got married to Sylvester Onwordi, in 1960 at the age of 16.
Her husband was just a school boy and they had been engaged since she was 11, and she gave birth to a daughter same year, and a son a year later.

Sylvester Onwordi moved to the United Kingdom to attend a university, and Buchi joined him there with their first children in the year 1962. She later gave birth three more children, making them seven in the family.
Her marriage wasn't a very happy one, and sometimes violent as she had chronicled in her autobiographical writings such as Second-Class Citizen. She wrote in her spare time to keep her sanity, and her husband was deeply suspicious of her writings and burned the first manuscript as she revealed in The Bride Price, eventually published in 1976.
It was her first book, and she had to rewrite the first version which had been destroyed. According to her, 'There were five years between the two versions.' She left her husband at age 22, while pregnant with her fifth child and while working to support her children alone, earned a B.Sc (Hons) degree in Sociology from the University of London, in 1972.
In her 1984 autobiography, Head Above Water she wrote: 
"As for my survival for the past twenty years in England, from when I was a little over twenty, dragging four cold and dripping babies with me and pregnant with a fifth one—that is a miracle."
She went on later to gain her PhD from the university in 1991. She had worked as a library officer for the British Museum in London from 1965 to 1969, and a youth worker and sociologist for the Inner London Education Authority, and then worked as a community worker in Camden, North London from 1976 to 1978.
She was still working on her novels with Allison and Busby – The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977), The Joys of Motherhood (1979) and Destination Biafra (1982) – as well as the children's books Titch the Cat (1979) and Nowhere To Play (1980).
Buchi has traveled widely as a lecturer and visiting professor. She has visited several American universities including Rutgers University, Pennsylvania State University, the University of California, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Los Angeles.
She also ran the Ogwugwu Afor Publishing Company together with her son, Sylvester from 1982 to 1983, publishing her own work, Double Yoke under the imprint in 1982.

She suffered a stroke in 2010, and died in London on the 25th of January, 2017 at the age of 72. Most of her fictional works are focused on sexual discrimination and racial prejudice informed by her own experiences as both a black woman and a single parent living in the UK.

Buchi Emecheta Literary Works

Buchi Emecheta's works have been published in a good number of journals and she also has several novels to her credit.
Some of her novels include:
• In the Ditch - 1972
• Second Class Citizen - 1974
• The Bride Price - 1976
• The Slave Girl (1977); winner of 1978 Jock Campbell Award
• The Joys of Motherhood - 1979
• The Moonlight Bride - 1981
• Our Own Freedom (with photographs by Maggie Murray; 1981)
• Destination Biafra - 1982
• Naira Power - 1982
• Adah's Story [In the Ditch/Second-Class Citizen] (London: Allison & Busby, 1983).
• The Rape of Shavi - 1983
• Double Yoke - 1982
• A Kind of Marriage (London: Macmillan, 1986); Pacesetter Novels series.
• Gwendolen - 1989. Published in the US as The Family
• Kehinde - 1994
• The New Tribe - 2000

Autobiography

She also published an autobiography:
 Head Above Water - 1984; 1986

Children’s/Young Adults' Books

She published books under the children series:
• Titch the Cat (illustrated by Thomas Joseph; 1979)
• Nowhere to Play (illustrated by Peter Archer; 1980)
• The Wrestling Match - 1981

Plays

Some Buchi's plays include:
• Juju Landlord (episode of Crown Court), Granada Television - 1975.
• A Kind of Marriage, BBC television - 1976.
• Family Bargain, BBC Television - 1987.

Articles And Publications

Buchi Emecheta was also published in a good number of magazines and journals.
Some of them include:
• The Black Scholar, November–December 1985, p. 51.
• "Feminism with a Small 'f'!" in Kirsten H. Petersen (ed.), Criticism and Ideology: Second African • • Writer's Conference, Stockholm 1988, Uppsala: Scandinanvian Institute of African Studies, 1988, pp. 173–181.
• Essence magazine, August 1990, p. 50.
• New York Times Book Review, 29 April 1990.
• Publishers Weekly, 16 February 1990, p. 73; reprinted 7 February 1994, p. 84.
• World Literature Today, Autumn 1994, p. 867.

Buchi Emecheta Quotes

Some of her quotes include but not limited to:
• A hungry man is an angry one.
• I work toward the liberation of women, but I'm not feminist. I'm just a woman.
• Black women all over the world should re-unite and re-examine the way history has portrayed us.

Well, there's no end to the list of her works! Buchi Emecheta was no doubt a genius in the writing industry.
What do you think? Kindly drop us a comment and share to your friends.
Before you leave, also check out our next article on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Her current net worth will surely leaver you shocked.
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