ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the arc of Buchi Emecheta’s growth as a writer from early autobiographical fiction to her final novel, Kehinde. She developed narrative structures and stylistic innovations that articulated her experience and understanding of hybrid identities forged first in the postcolonial metropolis of Lagos, Nigeria, and subsequently in London, the seat of colonial power and authority. While the early works employ a straightforward “sociological” prose and simple narrative chronology, Emecheta grew as a stylist who learned to incorporate concepts and language from her Igbo roots and diasporic, multi-ethnic London community that aligned with her emerging political sensibility as a feminist. In Kehinde, she takes on syncretic narrative techniques, employing a reconfigured, feminist version of chi, the Igbo concept of a personal god, to structure the eponymous protagonist’s central plot.
