Celebrating Buchi Emecheta

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 8 February 2018

⏱️ 45 minutes

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Summary

Buchi Emecheta explored child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education in over 20 books. Born in 1944 in an Ibusa village, she lost her father aged eight, travelled to London and made a career as a writer whilst bringing up five children on her own, working by day and studying at night for a degree. Shahidha Bari talks to her son Sylvester Onwordi, to New Generation Thinker Louisa Egbunike, to publisher Margaret Busby and magazine editor Kadija George. We also hear from other writers and publishers taking part in a day long series of discussions and performances at the Centre of African Studies at SOAS, University of London, on Saturday 3rd February. They include Alastair Niven - former Director of the Africa Centre, Dr Marie Linton Umeh, writer Irenosen Okojie, Professor Akachi Ezeigbo and poet Grace Nichols.

Buchi Emecheta's career took off when she turned her columns for the New Statesman about black British life into a novel In The Ditch which was published in 1972. It depicted a single black mother struggling to cope in England against a background of squalor. Two years later Allison and Busby published her book Second-Class Citizen, which focused on issues of race, poverty and gender. Now, a year after her death, the Omenala Press is re-issuing editions of her work.

Producer: Robyn Read

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?
0:23.3	It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream.
0:28.8	Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds.
0:32.0	Hello, I'm Shah Hadabari.
0:33.6	Welcome to BBC Radio 3's Arts and Ideas discussion program,
0:42.3	which brings together leading artists, writers and thinkers in conversation and debate.
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0:56.3	This is the BBC.
1:05.0	Hello. In the spring of 1983, the literary magazine, Granta, published a list of 20 best young British novelists, anointing a cohort of fresh-faced writers.
1:10.0	It was a prophetic list that included in its ranks Future Booker Prize winners,
1:13.6	Salman Rushdie and Pat Barker, Nobel laureate Kazoh Ishiguru,
1:17.6	and a young Nigerian woman by the name of Bushi Emoshetta.
1:22.6	In a photograph of the novelist of 1983,
1:25.6	Emachetta is serious-faced and smart, sat at the head of a row
1:29.1	that ends with a rakish Martin Amos and a young Ian McEwan amicably huddled together. Born in Nigeria
1:35.6	in 1944, she had been a child bride, emigrated to Britain, survived an abusive marriage, and
1:42.0	born five children by the time she was 22. When her husband burnt
1:46.8	the manuscript of her first novel, Emichetta left him and simply wrote another one. When she died
1:53.0	in January 2017, the Nigerian novelist from Amanda Nagorsi Adichie paid tribute. We are able to
	...

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