Today on bookflash Wednesday, we are spotlighting Second Class Citizen by Buchi Emecheta. A riveting, throbbing story, the novel explores the complexities of living in the white country and living as a submissive wife. While many dismissed the novel as simply a feministic manifesto, the novel does much more than projecting feministic ideas. It documents the cruelty of the patriarchal society have woman, and also the overpowering, suppressing authority the white community have over the blacks.
The novel opens with a girl, Adah, quiet, yet observant. She was neglected, left to her fate. The society she was born into invest little interest on girls’ education. What they believe is, girls, regardless of their achievements, will end up in the kitchen. Adah refused marriage, chose education instead, secretly built ways to attend school. After her father’s death, she finishes her academics and got a librarian job in Lagos. It was at this point, she married Francis. They had previously met while she was still in the University and had a brief relationship.
Francis left for England to further his studies. Adah on the other hand, worked tirelessly to support him financially. After a while she joined him in London with their children. Contrary to her illusion of what London is, what she sees completely distorted her. It looked nothing like it. She set out to get a property, but instead, met racism, especially in a street where it was written, ‘no coloured.’ There, Adah felt what it meant to be black and be a second class citizens, borrowing the title from Francophone’s Assimilation policy.
Francis discourages Adah’s ambitions, believing that women should remain submissive wives. When Adah completes her first novel manuscript, hoping to begin a writing career, Francis destroys it by burning the manuscript—one of the novel’s most heartbreaking moments. This is the second category of being a second class citizen. By being born woman in a patriarchal society, Adah found herself with no option but submitting.
Despite these setbacks, Adah refuses to surrender. She realizes that remaining in an abusive marriage will destroy both herself and her children’s future. Choosing dignity over dependence, she leaves Francis and begins rebuilding her life, embracing education, independence, and hope.
What gives the novel its strength is the source. The novel is an autobiographical novel of Buchi Emecheta. Through the novel, Buchi examined the following themes:
1. Gender Inequality: this is loudly pronounced all through the novel. From childhood, Adah is told that girls deserve fewer opportunities than boys. Boys are sent to school, given employment in companies, while the females are often subjected to sex before any favour is granted.
2. Racism and Immigration: during and after colonialism, young people believe London is paradise, a place of endless opportunities. But in the novel, Buchi confronted that illusion. London is beautiful for its aesthetics, but as a society, it is where Black immigrants often experience discrimination in housing, employment, and daily life. Adah learns that racial prejudice shapes many aspects of immigrant existence.
3. Education as Liberation: Education serves as Adah’s greatest weapon against oppression. Every stage of her progress is connected to learning, knowledge, and intellectual independence.
4. Domestic Violence: through the novel, Buchi portrays the violence second classed gender of the society go through. From Francis, Adah experiences emotional and physical abuse within marriage. He burnt her manuscript, beat her manuscript, and spend her earnings. Rather than romanticizing suffering, Emecheta exposes its destructive effects on women and children.
5. Motherhood: Adah loves her children deeply, but motherhood is presented as both a source of strength and an enormous responsibility. Her determination to secure a better future for them drives many of her decisions.
The novel was published 1974 by Allison & Busby in London. The first edition of the novel was 175. The novel captured Lagos, Nigeria and London, United Kingdom as its setting.
Buchi Emecheta (1944–2017) was one of Africa’s most influential novelists. Born in Lagos to Igbo parents, she moved to London in the early 1960s with her husband, where she experienced poverty, racism, and domestic abuse. Despite raising five children as a single mother, she earned a sociology degree and built an internationally respected literary career. Her novels frequently explore immigration, motherhood, gender inequality, colonial legacies, and the resilience of African women. Her best-known works include The Joys of Motherhood, The Bride Price, The Slave Girl, and Second Class Citizen. Through deeply personal storytelling, Emecheta gave voice to women whose struggles had often been ignored in both African and Western
