Reading Order
Second-Class Citizen Reading Order
Second-Class Citizen (1974) by Buchi Emecheta is the novel that established her as one of the most important African women writers of the 20th century — a partly autobiographical account of Adah, a young Ibo woman from Lagos who comes to England in the early 1960s to join her husband Francis and discovers that she is doubly marginalized: as a Black person in racist 1960s London, and as a woman in a marriage where her husband resents her success, destroys her manuscript, and leaves her to care for their children alone. Emecheta's novel is a foundational text in two traditions: the African women's literary tradition (alongside Mariama Bâ's So Long a Letter, Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions, and Flora Nwapa's Efuru) and the Black British literary tradition (alongside Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners and V.S. Naipaul's The Mimic Men). What distinguishes it from both traditions is its unflinching account of domestic violence, sexual coercion, and a husband's systematic destruction of his wife's ambitions — Emecheta does not flinch from the reality of patriarchal abuse even when it comes from within the Black community. Adah's eventual independence — leaving Francis, raising her children alone, becoming a writer — is one of the most hard-won victories in African women's fiction.
Where to start
Second-Class Citizen — read it alongside In the Ditch (1972), Emecheta's preceding autobiographical novel; Second-Class Citizen is technically its sequel but works perfectly as a standalone.
Complete Second-Class Citizen Book List
- 1Buy
Second-Class Citizen
Buchi Emecheta·1974·The novel — Adah's journey from Lagos to London and her fight for independence against a husband who resents her ambition; the foundational text of African women's fiction in Britain. - 2Buy
The Joys of Motherhood
Buchi Emecheta·1979·Emecheta's succeeding masterpiece — Nnu Ego's life in colonial Lagos and the bitter irony of motherhood as a Black woman's only identity; the companion that extends Second-Class Citizen's feminist concerns into Igbo tradition. - 3Buy
Efuru
Flora Nwapa·1966·The first novel published by an African woman — Nwapa's account of an Igbo woman outside conventional marriage in 1960s Nigeria; the African predecessor that Emecheta builds on in the African women's literary tradition. - 4Buy
So Long a Letter
Mariama Bâ·1979·Bâ's Senegalese epistolary feminist novel — the companion in African women's fiction; both novels are about women fighting for independence within African patriarchal structures. - 5Buy
Nervous Conditions
Tsitsi Dangarembga·1988·Dangarembga's Zimbabwean feminist novel — the companion in African women's coming-of-age fiction; the tradition that Emecheta and Nwapa established, extended to southern Africa. - 6Buy
The Lonely Londoners
Sam Selvon·1956·Selvon's Caribbean immigrant novel — the Black British literary companion; the experience of being Black in 1950s London that provides the context for Adah's double marginalization. - 7Buy
We Need New Names
NoViolet Bulawayo·2013·Bulawayo's Zimbabwean-American novel — the contemporary companion in African diaspora fiction; the pain of immigration and belonging that Adah experiences in 1960s London, updated to the present. - 8Buy
The Color Purple
Alice Walker·1982·Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel — the companion in African-American feminist fiction; both Celie and Adah are women fighting for voice and independence against domestic abuse, across the Atlantic world.
Second-Class Citizen — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Second-Class Citizen about?
Second-Class Citizen follows Adah, a young Ibo woman from Lagos, from her childhood determination to get an education (she teaches herself to read by following her brother to school and bribing the teacher) through her arrival in England to join her husband Francis and her experience of 1960s London. In England, Adah discovers that she is doubly marginalized: as a Black person, she faces housing discrimination, condescension, and the casual racism of postwar British society; as a woman, she faces a husband who resents her success (she earns more than him, she has more education) and who systematically destroys her ambitions, including burning the manuscript of her first novel. The novel traces Adah's gradual recognition that she must leave her marriage to survive, and ends with her departure from Francis and her determination to raise her children alone.
How autobiographical is Second-Class Citizen?
Highly autobiographical. Emecheta herself came to London from Nigeria in the early 1960s with her husband Sylvester Onwordi (the model for Francis), who burned the manuscript of her first attempt at a novel. The experience is fictionalized rather than documented — Adah is not Emecheta, and the novel is shaped by novelistic considerations — but the emotional and biographical core is directly from Emecheta's life. She also wrote an explicitly autobiographical account of this period, In the Ditch (1972), which covers the years after Adah leaves Francis and applies to a council housing authority. Second-Class Citizen is the prequel to In the Ditch, explaining how Adah arrived in the situation that In the Ditch begins from.
What does 'second-class citizen' mean in the novel?
The title's phrase appears directly in the novel and refers to the double marginalization that Adah experiences in Britain: she is a second-class citizen as a Black person in a racist society, and she is a second-class citizen as a woman in a patriarchal marriage. Emecheta is also invoking the formal legal category — before the Immigration Acts of the 1960s and 1970s, Commonwealth citizens had various degrees of formal legal status in Britain, and the informal reality of racial discrimination made many Black immigrants feel like second-class citizens regardless of their formal legal standing. The irony that Adah is, by Nigerian standards, highly educated and successful, is part of Emecheta's point: education and achievement do not protect a Black woman from either racism or domestic subordination.
How does Second-Class Citizen relate to African women's fiction?
Second-Class Citizen is generally placed alongside Flora Nwapa's Efuru (1966) and Mariama Bâ's So Long a Letter (1979) as a founding text of the African women's literary tradition. Nwapa's Efuru (published eight years earlier) was the first novel published by an African woman, and Nwapa and Emecheta are both Igbo writers. But where Nwapa's novel deals with a woman's experience within Igbo traditional society, Emecheta's deals with a Nigerian woman's experience in Britain — the diasporic dimension. Emecheta was also more explicitly feminist in her subject matter: where Nwapa explored the role of women within tradition, Emecheta confronted domestic abuse, sexual coercion, and the systematic destruction of a woman's ambitions by a man who feels threatened by them.
What should I read after Second-Class Citizen?
After Second-Class Citizen, Emecheta's The Joys of Motherhood (1979) is the most important companion — her account of motherhood in colonial Lagos, her most formally accomplished work. In the Ditch (1972) is the autobiographical prequel. For the African women's literary tradition, Flora Nwapa's Efuru (1966) is the predecessor and Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions (1988) is the successor. For the Black British literary tradition, Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners (1956) is the companion. For comparable feminist fiction across the diaspora, Alice Walker's The Color Purple and Mariama Bâ's So Long a Letter are essential companions.
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