by Flora Nwapa

Flora Nwapa was born on January 13, 1931, into a popular and wealthy family in Oguta, in the present Imo State of Nigeria. After a brief stint teaching at Priscilla Memorial Grammar School in Oguta, she began her university studies at the University College, Ibadan. Nwapa graduated in 1957; a year later she received a postgraduate Diploma in Education at the University of Edingurgh in Scotland. Upon returning to Nigeria, she taught briefly at a female high school in Eastern Nigeria, then joined the University of Lagos as Administrative Officer and remained there from 1962 until the outbreak of the Nigerian civil war in 1967. At this point, she, like many other members of the Igbo elite, was forced to return to the Eastern region. In 1966 she published Efuru, becoming not only Nigeria’s first female novelist but black Africa’s as well. The Tana Press, which she founded in...