M. Ainomugisha's Reviews > Second Class Citizen

** spoiler alert ** Second-Class Citizen covers surprising topics for its era. This is the sort of fictional writing that should be hailed alongside Chinua Achebe and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o in high school curricula. I’ve always wondered about African women fiction writers of that period and it’s always so heartening to find them out now. -It’s never too late to start reading their bodies of work.-

We commence by quickly identifying with Adah and her relentless desire for all forms literacy; first formal education and later reproductive enlightenment.
This theme carries the book. -I was frequently shook at the decisions Adah had to determine for herself amidst various forms of torture.-

An unlikely thread in this text is the changes in worship. What worship looked like to Adah and her relatives back in Nigeria transitions into a new worship when Adah and her children arrive in London and continues to transition as Francis takes to being a JW devotee.
-There is a paragraph where Adah describes her unique connection to prayer and a scattered few where she derides Biblical zealots, more especially her husband Francis, *very enjoyable stuff*.-

Adah comes of age with a lot of troubles and with a style so unfettered, demanding release from bondage. Second-Class Citizen reflects emotionally true to the kind of biographical read Emecheta’s introducing us to; the story of second-caliber humans.