The Slave Girl

by Buchi Emecheta

Book Overview

The Slave Girl follows the fortunes of Ogbanje Ojebeta, a Nigerian woman who is sold into slavery in her own land after disease and tragedy leave her orphaned as a child. In her fellow slaves, she finds a surrogate family that clings together under the unbending will of their master. As Ogbanje Ojebeta becomes a woman and discovers her need for home and family, and for freedom and identity, she realizes that she must ultimately choose her own destiny...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807609528
• ISBN13: 9780807609521
• Release Date: May 1980
• Publisher: George Braziller
• Length: 180 Pages
• Weight: 0.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.4" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Wonderful learning experience

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.

thought provoking

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.

Entertaining and Realistic

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.