As remains of renowned novelist Buchi Emecheta are buried today in London, some of her colleagues, including celebrated poet Niyi Osundare, iconic dramatist Femi Osofisan and her publisher Margaret Busby bid her farewell in these tributes. EVELYN OSAGIE reports.
She stole the hearts of many through her stories. She put the global spotlight on the plights of the African girl child and woman. Born on July 21, 1944, to the family of Alice Okwuekwuhe Emecheta and Jeremy Nwabudinke from Ibusa, Delta State, celebrated novelist Buchi Emecheta defied all odds to become a seasoned writer. Generations now call her “Mother”.
But sadly, last month, the cruel claws of death found her in her London home at 72. Her remains will be interred today at St Pancras Cemetery, 278 High Road, East Finchley, London N2 9AG. According to the family, the service will take place in the Islington Burial Chapel, which will be followed by the interment at 11:00 am. It was also gathered that a reception will hold by 1:00 pm at The Old White Lion, which is across the road from East Finchley tube station, 121 Great North Road, London N2 0NW.
Even in death, the legacies of the late Emecheta live on. In her lifetime, Emecheta wrote over 20 books, including In the Ditch (1972), Second-Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977), The Joys of Motherhood (1979) and The New Tribe (2000).
As she is being laid to rest today in London, the literati, including celebrated poet Niyi Osundare; her publisher Margaret Busby; iconic dramatist Femi Osofisan, Prof Godini G. Darah and Ghanaian literary scholar and poet Kofi Anyidoho bid their colleague and friend goodbye in this write-up which is second in the series on the late novelist.
The unintended feminist
– Niyi Osundare
The world has just suffered the sad, irreplaceable loss of a woman who willed herself into significance; a writer who literally wrote each work with blood from her veins. Husbandless and with five children at age 22, Buchi Emecheta pressed the abundance of life’s challenges into the richness of art, producing some of the most frequently cited works in contemporary African literature. From The Joys of Motherhood to Second Class Citizen, from The Bride Price to Destination Biafra, her graphically-titled works deal with various aspects of African womanhood, its countless travails and repressed possibilities. Very much in the league of writers like Flora Nwapa, Ama Ata Aidoo, Mariama Ba, and Bessie Head, Emecheta played an un-ignorable role in the gendering of modern African literature and the feminist/womanist theorising which serves as its intellectual correlative.
In “Feminist with a Small “f”!, an article presented at the 1986 Second African Writers’ Conference in Stockholm, Sweden, Emecheta opened the floor with the following sentence: I am just an ordinary writer, an ordinary writer who has to write because if I didn’t write I think I would have to be put in an asylum.(My italics)
And later in that article, she delivers this memorable averment: I write about the little happenings of everyday life. Being a woman and African born, I see things through an African woman’s eyes. I chronicle the little happenings in the lives of the African women I know. I did not know that by doing so I was going to be called feminist. But if I am now a feminist then I am an African feminist with a small f. (My italics)
There goes Buchi Emecheta, the unintended feminist, a stubborn, consistent defender of woman rights who taught the world other ways of looking at gender from the African perspective. A feisty, irrepressible person not known for whispering her objection to objectionable situations, Emecheta was a true ‘natural’ who often spoke from the heart. She was here. And still is. And our world is richer through every moment of her 72 years.
Inspiration to my many students – Ghanaian scholar/poet
Kofi Anyid2oho
Many thanks, Evelyn Osagie, for the opportunity to pay a brief tribute to our sister Buchi Emecheta. Your request, like earlier news of Emecheta’s passing, found me still speechless. Then I thought of what Emecheta’s passing is likely to mean for the now countless students of mine who have found so much inspiration in her words, in the courage of her thoughts. It occurred to me that the greatest tribute I could pay to Emecheta’s memory must be found in the words of some of my students. So when your email reminder came this morning, I was wondering where to begin. Somehow, Kelechi Osigwe steps into my office, all the way from Nigeria, holding a copy of her M.Phil thesis in which she has celebrated Buchi Emecheta, (together with Flora Nwapa and Chimamanda Adichie), for the courage of her thoughts and the abundance of the fruits of her imagination. So let me yield my teacher’s voice to that of Kelechi, yet another discerning student who has found in Emecheta’s works several things that I missed from my many readings of her novels:
“So [she]walked to freedom, with nothing but four babies, her new job, and a box of rags,” (Second Class Citizen, 188).
Emecheta walks to freedom from this world with accolades for her contribution to African Literature – African Women Writing… (Kelechi Osigwe, M.Phil Candidate, University of Ghana, Legon).
Her poignant stories resonate worldwide – Her friend/publisher Margaret Busby
To have been Buchi Emecheta’s editor for more than a decade – the period in which she wrote most of her best-loved and influential books – In the Ditch, Second-Class Citizen, the Bride Price, The Slave Girl, The Joys of Motherhood, Destination Biafra – was indeed rewarding. From the onset, the dedication with which she produced her fledgling works was awesome, given the personal odds she had to overcome, and it became something of a mission for me to help her achieve the readership she so deserved. We bonded perhaps through the fact that we were both young African women taking chances and finding our way in an often challenging literary world (I had become in 1967 “the UK’s youngest and first African woman publisher”). She trusted my editorial judgement, and it was indeed an honour that she dedicated her 1977 novel The Slave Girl: “To Margaret Busby for her believing in me.” Although in recent years her voice had been cruelly silenced by illness, the insightful and poignant stories she brought to life – of Africa and the African Diaspora – still resonate worldwide. What Emecheta achieved is an example and inspiration to us all; she triumphed over inauspicious beginnings to demonstrate the lasting power emanating from the ability to tell an honest story well. Hers was a rags-to-riches tale that everyone now wishes had had a happier ending.
Adieu Buchi Emecheta
– Femi Osofisan
We in the writing community cannot of course but mourn the loss of Buchi Emecheta. But the dirge did not start yesterday. It’s not just because of her death—after all she has left behind a record of outstanding performance, and sufficient offspring to sing her valour. Sadly we have watched, since the passing of Chinua Achebe, and then of Elechi Amadi, the slow and gradual wilting of a season of art and creativity defined mainly by nobility and a superior vision. Emecheta belonged to that generation of writers, now rapidly dwindling, whose lofty minds conceived of art as a grand and holy vocation, a house of healing and dreaming and self-regeneration, a fountainhead of humane values. They are being replaced by the buccaneers of our new mercantile age. That is why the loss is so painful; a further mile away from the golden morning when the artist was priest, prophet and pilot of enlightenment and joy. Emecheta is gone! Goodbye, our grand old Lady of the Pen! When you arrive over there, please be kind to those of us left behind.
A new penumbra of ancestral pantheon – scholar/NOLA president Prof Godini G. Darah
She was in Calabar at the university to mentor students in the humane craft of creativity and criticism. A new penumbra of ancestral pantheon is growing around these writers
and singers of tales, namely: Chinua Achebe, Elechi Amadi, Isidore Okpewho, and now Buchi Emecheta. We of the Nigerian Oral Literature Association (NOLA) will not mourn but mobilise to continuously celebrate them for making our world richer and safer with stories and laughter.
Emecheta was courageous – scholar and writer Prof Kole Omotoso
Margret Busby who published her early novels informed me about it this morning. Sad news. It was known that she had been ill for some time and was not in a position to travel. If there is one writer who suffered in order to write it was Buchi Emecheta. That she succeeded was evidence of her courage and perseverance. May her soul rest in peace.
Her death signals the end of an era – scholar/writer Prof Akachi Ezeigbo
The sad news of the passing away of the renowned novelist, Buchi Emecheta, shocked me beyond words – she died at 72! Though I knew she had been ill for a while, but I had thought she would recover eventually. Her death signals the end of an era – the age that brought recognition and glory to the African feminist literary tradition. Emecheta’s works, especially her magnum opus, The Joys of Motherhood, as well as The Slave Girl, The Bride Price, Destination Biafra, Second Class Citizen, In the Ditch and others, brought international acclaim to African women’s literary production in the late twentieth century. She was a pioneer alongside other iconic writers, such as Flora Nwapa, Ama Ata Aidoo, Bessie Head, and Mariama Ba, to mention just a few. Her voice was one of the first to recreate in fiction the experiences of African women in a very realistic and authentic manner. She was an accomplished writer who won literary awards, was given honorary doctorate degree and who also received the Order of the British Empire (OBE) from the British Monarch, Queen Elizabeth the Second.
The history of African literature in general and Nigerian literature in particular would definitely reserve a prominent position for this celebrated woman of letters who put African literature as well as Black British writing on the global literary map. May her soul rest in peace and may God console her family.
Emecheta’s commitment would be missed – Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) President Denja Abdullahi
Buchi Emecheta orchestrated the birth of the womanist theory and advocacy in the literary space and the domestication of feminism within the ambience of womanism through her works devoted to exploring the place of the female in a highly patriarchal society. A committed writer and a master storyteller, Buchi Emecheta has left a loaded basket of books and literary materials widely recommended and in use in different parts of the world. She alongside Flora Nwapa were the inspirational springs for many of our female writers of the latter generations in Nigeria. In 2002, she was with us at the ANA convention which held in Asaba, Delta State, to facilitate a creative writing workshop for younger writers. A lot of young persons who attended that convention found her to be of immense encouragement to their fledgeling art. Her iconoclastic and firm commitment to living her art through personal example would be missed.
Emecheta took Nigerian women’s fiction to international heights
– Journalist/writer Molara Wood
Long before the rise of the new generation of female writers, Buchi Emecheta trod a lonely path, taking Nigerian women’s fiction to international heights, making herself a household name at home and abroad. She wrote important books on what it meant to be a woman, and what it meant to be in a foreign land. She overcame great odds; her husband burnt her manuscript, yet she persevered, setting a wonderful example for every writer.