Emecheta, Buchi

Buchi Emecheta was born in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1944 and moved to London in 1960, where she started a family and worked in a library. She became a student at London University in 1970, and later became a community worker. Her writing explores the intersecting issues of race, gender, and class, and focuses in many cases on the struggles of young, poor, black, and often single mothers.

Emecheta is a formidable voice in African women's literature, and a prolific one as well. She has written more than 11 novels, an (official) autobiography, two children's books, four juvenile novels, and four plays. Besides this, she has written numerous personal and critical essays and is a regular contributor to the New Statesman, the Times Literary Supplement, and The ...