Top 20 Quotes & Sayings by Buchi Emecheta

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Nigerian novelist Buchi Emecheta.

Last updated on April 18, 2025.

Florence Onyebuchi "Buchi" Emecheta was a Nigerian-born novelist, based in the UK from 1962, who also wrote plays and an autobiography, as well as works for children. She was the author of more than 20 books, including Second Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). Most of her early novels were published by Allison and Busby, where her editor was Margaret Busby.

Nigerian - Novelist | July 21, 1944 - January 25, 2017

Source: Wikipedia

The first book I wrote was The Bride Price which was a romantic book, but my husband burnt the book when he saw it. I was the typical African woman, I'd done this privately, I wanted him to look at it, approve it and he said he wouldn't read it.

Buchi Emecheta

Being a woman writer, I would be deceiving myself if I said I write completely through the eye of a man. There's nothing bad in it, but that does not make me a feminist writer. I hate that name. The tag is from the Western world - like we are called the Third World.

Buchi Emecheta

I usually make sure that my stories are from Africa or my own background so as to highlight the cultural background at the same time as telling the story.

Buchi Emecheta

I work toward the liberation of women, but I'm not feminist. I'm just a woman.

Buchi Emecheta

I came to England in 1962 as a very young bride, in my teens, hoping just to stay two years and go back.

Buchi Emecheta

I like to be called a Nigerian rather than somebody from the Third World or the developing or whatever.

Buchi Emecheta

As soon as I finish a book, I sell the paperback rights to different publishers and that's where I recoup my money.

Buchi Emecheta

A hungry man is an angry one.

Buchi Emecheta

In all my novels, I deal with the many problems and prejudices which exist for Black people in Britain today.

Buchi Emecheta

Black women all over the world should re-unite and re-examine the way history has portrayed us.

Buchi Emecheta

I always value my large kitchen because it was better to do everything there, you wash up, you do everything, rather than messing up another room and I pop my typewriter just next to it. So I still write now but I was doing more writing when the children were younger.

Buchi Emecheta

I believe it is important to speak to your readers in person... to enable people to have a whole picture of me; I have to both write and speak. I view my role as writer and also as oral communicator.

Buchi Emecheta

Few things are as bad as a guilty conscience.

Buchi Emecheta

I was a threat to a lot of women and to a lot of men. The women cannot forgive me if I remain single and also have a family. But I have a family as well and am raising them. A lot of women only stay in their marriages because of the children so seeing me on my own annoys them.

Buchi Emecheta

When I came to England it wasn't what it is now, then the black people were very rarely strong. I had a personal shock because England wasn't what I expected it to be... where people lived like Jane Austen.

Buchi Emecheta

But who made the law that we should not hope in our daughters? We women subscribe to that law more than anyone. Until we change all this, it is still a man's world, which women will always help to build.

Buchi Emecheta

Men blackmailing you as a woman leads you to trivialise sex and say 'it's not important, what is important is myself as a person, no one owns me because of sex.'

Buchi Emecheta

Women should not be suppressed because they are women, because they have children and because of men. Then I am a feminist. But when it comes to the African concept, for the moment, I say 'feminist plus'. We have so many other problems.

Buchi Emecheta