ABSTRACT
While Nigerian author Buchi Emecheta was publishing In the Ditch (1972), Second-Class Citizen (1974), The Joys of Motherhood (1975), The Bride Price (1976), and The Slave Girl (1977), the adult novels which brought her international acclaim in the late 1970s and early 1980s, she was concurrently publishing books labelled as ‘young adult’: The Wrestling Match (1980) and The Moonlight Bricle (1983). Slices of life set in Western Igbo villages, these two books foreground intracommunal, particularly adolescent, dilemmas that are minor compared to those in the books for adults. In trying to establish his own footing in the village, Okei, the teenage protagonist of The Wrestling Match, metaphorically wrestles with the elders—male and female—with girls his own age, with boys his own age, and with educational differences between those who know no English and those, like himself, who know a little. Okei and his cohorts also wrestle with the elders, boys, and girls of a neighboring compound. A real wrestling match is the book’s climax; through this age-old Igbo means of determining one’s standing, tradition accomplishes reconciliation. The Moonlight Bride centers on two adolescent girls and their attempts to discover the secret behind the arrival of a new bride into the village. Once again, the entire village is involved, and, once again, with the climactic arrival and acceptance of the bride the book concludes with reconciliation to tradition. I will discuss issues in these books more fully below. For the moment, I need only say that, while not devoid of social criticism, in contrast to Emecheta’s adult novels, these books for young readers are much milder.
