Kehinde Summary

Buchi Emecheta is the successful author of the novel Kehinde. She was born in Lagos in Nigeria, but later moved to London in the 1970s during the period of student immigration from ex-British countries in Africa to England. Her novels and plays focus on themes such as “child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education.(cite)” These works include The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977), Titch the Cat (1979), Nowhere to Play (1980), The Moonlight Bride (1980), The Wrestling Match (1980) ,On Our Freedom (1981), Destination Biafra (1982), Naira Power (1982), Double Yoke (1982), The Rape of Shavi (1983), Adah’s Story (1983), A Kind of Marriage (1986), Family Bargain (1987), Gwendolen (1990), Kehinde (1994), and

However in Kehinde, Emecheta defies tradition by initially giving the protagonist equal power to men, then as the novel progress Kehinde begins to gradually lose some of her power, and finally as the novel ends, she gains more power than what she started with. At the beginning of Kehinde, Emecheta immediately establishes Kehinde as the provider for the household when Albert says “Stupid country, where you need you wife’s money to makes ends meet.” Kehinde status as the money maker enables her to have an equal say so to Albert in decision makings. This is seen when Albert is asked by his coworker, “What does your wife say to [getting an abortion].” In other feminist texts, women never have a say so on how many children will be produced or much of anything. However, Kehinde is even more aware of her power than her husband, she knows “she could talk to her husband less formally than women like her sister, Ifeyinwa, who were in more traditional marriages. She related to Albert as a friend, a compatriot, a confidant.” The fact that Kehinde knows how much power she has stay in mind as a conscious reminder when she finds herself into an oppressive situation, but it also enables her to navigate herself out the oppressive situation. Furthermore, while referring to his house in London,

Considering the fact that Kehinde partially strays away from some of the main themes of feminist text , Emecheta does a great job of exploring the effects of sacrificing oneself for marriage and children versus not sacrificing oneself for marriage and children. At the beginning of the novel Kehinde has to abort her child in order for her to move her family back to Nigeria. This leaves Kehinde thinking about the what if’s: what if the baby was boy or what if she can never have kids again after she aborts the baby. The questioning that a woman goes through after she sacrifices a child is seen in Véronique Tadjo’s Queen Pokou; Queen Pokou explores the different outcomes of the protagonist life after she sacrifices her child for the people of her village. No only does Kehinde have to give up her child to move to Nigeria, she has to give up her job at the bank and physically distance herself from her husband and children for two years to sell their house in