Customer Reviews

The Slave Girl: A Novel

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Once again Ms Emecheta has written a thought provoking and captivating book about domestic slavery in Nigeria. The setting is in Nigeria in the early 20th Century and wound around significant events of the time such as the Influenza epidemic, Aba market women's riot,colonization and arrival of the missionaries. The heroine a young girl is sold into slavery by her own brother after the death of their parents in the influenze epidemic. The story details the twists and turns in her life while in bondage, her eventual return to her people and subsequent events.

Though a novel, this tale shows the type of slavery that has continued to exist in Africa until very recently, and continues in some parts today. Emecheta presents a girl's predicament from a personal perspective, telling the reader both why slavery was seen as necessary and how it hurt this child. She also makes clear that this is a very different kind of slavery than that pictured by Americans. Well-written and only half fiction, this novel is a good read for anyone interested in West African culture.

This novel offers a more accurate narrative of African Identity. It charts the journey of a young girl from slavery to freedom, but more importantly it refutes a Western Fairytale ending. Instead the novel inserts its reader into the Igbo way of thinking and living, and their terms of a happy ending. I enjoyed this novel tremendously. It is a good read.

The Slave Girl, by Buchi Emecheta, follows the life of Ogbanje Ojebeta, a Nigerian girl who faces tragedy and slavery in the height of African colonialism, the early 1900s. She is orphaned at an early age, then betrayed and sold into slavery by her own people. She learns that in order to survive she must grow-up at the age of seven and lean on her newfound slave family. After nine years she discovers that her destiny is something only she can choose for herself.
This novel opened my eyes to the truth behind slavery in Africa. I had never considered the possibility of children being traded within their own countries and being owned, essentially, by their people. After reading this book, detailed with culture and vivid descriptions of Ogbanje Ojebeta's life, I can't wait to further educate myself on this topic and Africa as a whole.

This book had so much potential to be very good but it just fell flat in every way. I'm sorry.