• Source: Second Class Citizen (novel)

Second Class Citizen is a 1974 novel by Nigerian writer Buchi Emecheta. It was published in London, England, by Allison and Busby and subsequently in the United States in 1975 by George Braziller. Often described as semi-autobiographical, the novel entails the story of Adah, the major book character, Nigerian woman who overcomes strict tribal domination of women and countless setbacks to achieve an independent life for herself and her children. She moved from Nigeria to London, where she faced hard living conditions and a violent marriage to Francis. The novel explores the themes of gender and marriage, religion and immigration.




Background


This sequel to Emecheta's 1972 novel In the Ditch was written after Emecheta had left her unhappy marriage and was raising her five children as a single mother. On the dedication page to Second Class Citizen, the author references "my dear children, Florence, Sylvester, Jake, Christy and Alice, without whose sweet background noises this book would not have been written".




Plot summary


Adah is a black Nigerian girl from the Ibo part of the country. She is from Ibuza and lives in Lagos. She dreams of moving to the United Kingdom. After her father dies, Adah is sent to live with her uncle's family. She goes to school in Nigeria and attained employment working for the American consulate as a library clerk. The compensation from the job is enough to make her a desirable bride for Francis.
Francis travels to the United Kingdom with the help of Adah to study law. She was the breadwinner of her family and her husband's family. Adah convinces her husband's family that she and the children also belong in the UK. Francis believes they are second-class citizens in the United Kingdom as they are not citizens of the country. Adah finds employment working for another library and pays for their expenses, while also providing primary care for their children.




Critical reception


Hermione Harris wrote in Race & Class: "Of the scores of books about race and black communities in Britain that had appeared during the 1960s and early 1970s, the great majority are written by white academic ultimately concerned with the relationship between white society and black 'immigrants'. Few accounts have emerged from those on the receiving end of British racism or liberalism of their own black experience. On the specific situation of black women there is almost nothing. Second Class Citizen is therefore something of a revelation."
A new edition of the book was published for the Penguin Modern Classics series in October 2020, after many years of being out of print. John Self in The Guardian wrote that, despite being on Granta's Best of Young British Novelists list in 1983, in subsequent years Emecheta "...didn't get the column inches. So it's a late justice that she is one of the few Granta alumni, alongside Martin Amis and Shiva Naipaul, to be promoted to the Penguin Modern Classics list."




References






Further reading


Peace Yetunde Onafuye, "50 Years of Buchi Emecheta's Second-Class Citizen", The Republic (Nigeria), 27 February 2024.
Margaret Busby, "Where to start with: Buchi Emecheta", The Guardian, 20 March 2024.




External links


"Buchi Emecheta interview | Civil Rights | women's rights | Today | 1975", Thames TV, via YouTube.

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