Buchi Emecheta Quotes

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

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.

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

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.

I am a woman and a woman of Africa. I am a daughter of Nigeria and if she is in shame, I shall stayand mourn with her in shame.

Few things are as bad as a guilty conscience.

I'm not just a feminist - I'm a feminist plus.

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

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.

A hungry man is an angry one.

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.

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.

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.

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.'

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.

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.

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

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

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