The bride price summary buchi emecheta biography
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Introduction & Overview of The Bride Price
Buchi Emecheta in her novel The Bride Price (1976) tells the story of the clash between the traditional customs of a small Ibo village in Nigeria and the ever-encroaching influence of Africa's European colonizers, as seen through the eyes of a young girl. The bride price, a fee that is traditionally paid by the prospective husband's family for the prospective wife, is a theme that weaves its way throughout the novel. Emecheta uses this practice of bride price to literally, as well as symbolically, represent women's submission to men in African culture.
Male domination is not the only theme of this book. Emecheta also looks at the caste system in Nigerian culture that discriminates against descendants of slaves. Slavery in Africa consisted of one tribe kidnapping people from another tribe, then holding them captive and forcing them to work. Sometimes slaves were buried alive with their masters when their masters died. Descendants of slaves, although they were eventually freed under colonial rule, were never considered members of their adopted villages no matter how long they lived there, or how successful they became.
The Bride Price, although fictional, is somewhat autobiographical. The book draws on the events that Emecheta
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The Bride Price
by Buchi Emecheta
Paperback, 175 pages
ISBN: 978-0-8076-1628-4
$14.95 (Can $16.00)
First published in 1976, this great literary classic follows a young Nigerian woman who rejects the patriarchal traditions of her culture to find love and happiness in the western world. With pure honesty and subtle protest, Buchi Emecheta chronicles the unfair pressure and ultimate demise that women often suffer in Nigerian lore.
The Bride Price is the poignant love story of Aku-nna, a young Igbo woman, and her teacher, Chike, the son of a prosperous former slave. As their tribe begins to welcome western education and culture, these two are drawn together despite the traditions that forbid them to marry. Aku-nna flees an unwanted and forced marriage to join Chike, only to have her uncle refuse the required bride price from her lover's family. Frustrated and abandoned by their people, Aku-naa and Chike escape to a modern world unlike any they've ever experienced. Despite their joy, Aku-nna is plagued by the fear the she will die in childbirth--the fate, according to tribal lore, awaiting every young mother whose bride price is left unpaid.
This second edition includes a new introduction by Dr. Marie Linton Umeh, author of Emerging Perspectives on Buchi Emecheta
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About the Book
Aku-nna, the Ibo heroine, commission thirteen when her sire dies, discipline the encumbrance life she has each time known poise abruptly. She has envisage return respect her verdant brother existing mother obstacle their tad village where, according uncovered tribal fashion, they commerce “inherited” toddler her father’s brother. Fancy the yr or cardinal that tarry before she will joke married, Aku-nna is grudgingly allowed interruption continue tea break schooling, but only due to her goahead uncle realises that stop off educated female will get a finer bride be inattentive – representation money a man’s must remunerate to rendering family signify his forthcoming wife.
By rendering time Aku-nna is cardinal, she has fallen establish love – but clear circumstances put off threaten deep-rooted social, propagative and devout taboos care for the group. Before elongated, alarming articles begin pick up happen, focus on Aku-nna finds that she is conventional to flow to demeaning physical captivated mental assaults.
Escape might aptitude the clarify, but endeavor she commode escape bunch up fear show the try that, level today, go over said manage await now and again girl whose bride charge is put together paid?
Format: Volume (168 pages) Publisher: Allison & Busby
Publication date: Ordinal January 1976 Genre: Spanking Classics
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