Buchi Emecheta was born as Florence Onye Buchi Emecheta on July 21, 1944, near Lagos, Nigeria. Her parents were from the Igbo village of Ibuza in southeastern Nigeria, and although they were nominally Christian, they also retained traditional Igbo beliefs, so that Emecheta grew up with a multiplicity of cultures. Her parents made sure that she spent time in their village so that she would know her original culture, but she grew up in Lagos, where another ethnic group, the Yoruba, was dominant.

Emecheta became aware early that not only was she a member of a minority in Lagos, but also that her own culture, the Igbo, valued boys more than girls. These experiences gave her a feeling of being an outsider that continued throughout her life, and was often expressed in her writing.

As a girl, she dreamed of becoming a writer someday, but this dream was...