Buchi Emecheta > Quotes

“God, when will you create a woman who will be fulfilled in herself, a full human being, not anybody’s appendage? she prayed desperately.”
― Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood

“At home in Nigeria, all a mother had to do for a baby was wash and feed him and, if he was fidgety, strap him onto her back and carry on with her work while that baby slept. But in England she had to wash piles and piles of nappies, wheel the child round for sunshine during the day, attend to his feeds as regularly as if one were serving a master, talk to the child, even if he was only a day old! Oh, yes, in England, looking after babies was in itself a full-time job.”
― Buchi Emecheta, Second Class Citizen

“The leaves were still on the trees, but were becoming dry, perched like birds ready to fly off.”
― Buchi Emecheta, Second Class Citizen

“Enquanto voltava para o quarto, ocorreu a Nnu Ego que ela uma prisioneira: aprisionada pelo amor por seus filhos, aprisionada pelo papel de esposa mais velha. Dela, não se esperava nem que pedisse mais dinheiro para a família, essa atitude seria considerada inferior ao padrão esperado de uma mulher em sua posição. Não era justa, ela achava, o modo como os espertos dos homens usavam o sentido de responsabilidade de uma mulher para escravisá-la na prática.”
― Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood

“Os homens nos fazem acreditar que precisamos desejar filhos ou morrer. Foi por isso que quando perdi meu primeiro filho eu quis a morte, porque não fora capaz de corresponder ao modelo esperado de mim pelos homens da minha vida, meu pai e meu marido, e agora tenho que incluir também meus filhos. Mas quem foi que escreveu a lei que nos proíbe de investir nossas esperanças em nossas filhas? Nós, mulheres, corroboramos essa lei mais que ninguém. Enquanto não mudarmos isso, este mundo continuará sendo um mundo de homens, mundo esse que as mulheres sempre ajudarão a construir.”
― Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood

“Nnu Ego was like those not-so well-informed Christians who,promised the Kingdom of Heaven,believed that it was literally just round the corner and that Jesus Christ was coming on the very morrow. Many of them would hardly contribute anything ton this world,reasoning, "What is the use? Christ will come soon" They became so insulated in their beliefs that not only would they have little to do with ordinary sinners,people going about their daily work, they even pitied them and in many cases looked down on them because the Kingdom of God was not for the likes of them. Maybe this was a protective mechanism devised to save them from realities too painful to accept.”
― Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood

“In Ibuza sons help their father more than they help their mother. A mother's joy is only in the name. She worries over them,looks after them when they are small;but in the actual help on the farm ,the upholding of the family name,all belong to the father.”
― Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood

“A man is never ugly".”
― Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood

“Nnaife did not realise that Dr Meers's laughter was inspired by that type of wickedness that reduces any man, white or black, intelligent or not, to a new low; lower than the basest of animals, for animals at least respected each other's feelings, each other's dignity.”
― Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood

“Typical Igbo psychology; men never do wrong, only the women; they have to beg for forgiveness, because they are bought, paid for and must remain like that, silent, obedient slaves.”
― Buchi Emecheta, Second Class Citizen

“Deus, quando você irá criar uma mulher que se sinta satisfeita com sua própria pessoa, um ser humano pleno, não o apêndice de alguém?”
― Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood

“One thing she did know was the greatest book on human psychology is the Bible. If you were lazy and did not wish to work, or if you had failed to make your way in society, you could always say, 'My kingdom is not of this world.' If you were a jet-set woman who believed in sleeping around, VD or no VD, you could always say Mary Magdalene had no husband, but didn't she wash the feet of Our Lord? Wasn't she the first person to see our risen saviour? If, in the other hand, you believed in the inferiority of the blacks, you could always say, 'Slaves, obey your masters.' It is a mysterious book, one of the greatest of all books, if not the greatest. Hasn't it got all the answers?”
― Buchi Emecheta, Second Class Citizen

“Quanto mais eu penso no assunto, mais me dou conta de que nós, mulheres, fixamos modelos impossíveis para nós mesmas. Que tornamos a vida intolerável umas para as outras. Não consigo corresponder a nossos modelos, esposa mais velha. Por isso preciso criar meus próprios.”
― Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood

“She did not delude herself into expecting Francis to love her. He had never been taught how to love, but had an arresting way of looking pleased at Adah's achievements.”
― Buchi Emecheta, Second Class Citizen

“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 this, it is still a man's world, which women will always help to build.”
― Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood

“Every woman should be free to live the life she chooses.”
― Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood

“On her way back to their room, it occurred to Nnu Ego that she was a prisoner, imprisoned by her love for her children, imprisoned by her role as the senior wife. She was not even expected to demand more money for her family; that was considered below the standard expected of a woman in her position. It was not fair, she felt, the way men cleverly used a woman’s sense of responsability to actually enslave her. They knew that the traditional wife like herself would never dream of leaving her children.”
― Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood

“Yet the more I think about it the more I realise that we women set impossible standards for ourselves. That we make life intolerable for one another. I cannot live up to your standards, senior wife. So I have to set my own.”
― Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood

“Alguns pais, especialmente os que têm muitos filhos de diferentes esposas podem rejeitar um mau filho, um amo pode rejeitar um criado perverso, uma esposa pode chegar ao ponto de abandonar um mau marido, mas uma mãe nunca, nunca pode rejeitar seu filho. Se ele for condenado, ela será condenada ao lado dele.”
― Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood

“Don't blame anyone for what has happened to your father. Things have changed drastically since the days of his own youth,but he has refused to see the changes...The fact is that parents get only reflected glory from their children nowadays,whereas your father has invested in all of you, just as his father invested in him so that he could help on the farm. Your father forgot that he himself left the family farm to come to this place.”
― Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood

“Marriage is lovely when it works, but if it does not, should one condemn oneself ? I stopped feeling guilty for being me.”
― Buchi Emecheta

“An uneducated person has little chance of happiness. He cannot enjoy reading, he cannot understand any complicated music, he does not know what to do with himself if he has no job. How many times have I heard my friends say, ' I want to leave my boring job because I want to write, because I want to catch up with goings on in the theatre, because I want to travel and because I want to be with my family. '
The uneducated man has no such choices. Once he has lost his boring job, he feels he's lost his life. That is unfair.”
― Buchi Emecheta, Head Above Water

“Writers simply have to write, and not worry so much about what people think, because public opinion is such a difficult horse to ride.”
― Buchi Emecheta, Head Above Water

“Yes, life could at times be so brutal that the only things that made it livable were dreams.”
― Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood

“Then I ran to her and our relatives laughed. The knots of bystanders were horrified at the loss of her expensive tusk ornaments, but with my hand firmly clasped in hers she reminded them, with her face beaming,'When has it ever been a virtue to be rich in wealth and poor in people?' The relatives nodded. They understood her very well- why have heaven an earth when you have no one to share it with?”
― Buchi Emecheta, Head Above Water

“Adah could not stop thinking about her discovery that the whites were just as fallible as everyone else. There were bad whites and good whites, just as there were bad blacks and good blacks! Why then did they claim to be superior?”
― Buchi Emecheta, Second Class Citizen

“Era esse o resultado da Nigéria ter sido governada durante tanto tempo pelos ingleses. A inteligência da pessoa era avaliada pela forma como ela falava inglês. Mas não importava nem um pouco se os ingleses eram ou não capazes de falar as línguas dos povos que governavam.”
― Buchi Emecheta, Cidadã de segunda classe

“She had gambled with marriage, just like most people, but she had gambled unluckily and had lost.”
― Buchi Emecheta, Second Class Citizen

“Living entirely off writing is a precarious existence and money is always short, bit with careful management and planning I found I could keep my head and those of my family, through God's grace, above water.”
― Buchi Emecheta, Head Above Water

“She, who only a few months previously would have accepted nothing but the best, had by now been conditioned to expect inferior things. She was now learning to suspect anything beautiful and pure. Those things were for the whites, not the blacks.”
― Buchi Emecheta, Second Class Citizen