ABSTRACT
Buchi Emecheta (née Florence Onyebuchi Emecheta), Africa’s most prolific female writer, with nineteen published books to date and numerous essays, was born in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1944, although her parents came from Umuezeokolo Odanta Village in Ibuza, Delta State, an Igbo-speaking area. After completing her primary education at Ladilak School and Reagan Memorial Baptist School, she won a scholarship to Methodist Girls’ High School in Lagos. She passed her West African School Certificate Examinations with honors and subsequently married Nduka Sylvester Onwordi. Emecheta worked for the American embassy in Lagos for two years before she went abroad in 1962 to join her husband, who was studying for a degree in accountancy at London University. They had five children—three girls and two boys—but the marriage, which had difficulties exacerbated by the life of an African student struggling in London, ended in great bitterness.
