Search for Identity and Home in Buchi Emecheta’s novel SecondClass Citizen

Abstract

Buchi Emecheta is one of the eminent women writers from Nigeria writing about the issues of African women’s roles in the patriarchal society, the subjugation and marginalisation of African women and the clashes between tradition and modernity. Apart from these themes, the loss of identity of black women in foreign country like the United Kingdom is another recurring theme. In trying to acclimatize to the new rules, new ways of life, people, culture and environment, an emigrant finds herself torn between homelessness and alienation. The present paper is an attempt to explore how Buchi Emecheta has represented the experience and cause of being homeless and the loss of identity of the self through the central character of Adah Obi in the novel Second-Class Citizen (1974). Overall, the paper will provide an invigorating and incisive analysis of the different degrees of experiences of migrants when one crosses the border leaving home for a new and alien country.