The Family: A Novel - Softcover

Emecheta, Buchi

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807612502 ISBN 13: 9780807612507

Publisher: George Braziller Inc., 1990

Synopsis

A Jamaican girl joins her parents in London at age eleven and makes formidable adjustments and choices to overcome the limitations of her family life.

The story of a young Jamaican girl, Gwendolen Brillianton, who is born into poverty and deserted by her parents when they emigrate to London. Being reunited with her parents and the siblings she has never met does not end her problems, and she realizes she must must fight her family and take control of her own life in order to recover from abuse and take pride in her self. Originally published as Gwendolen.

About this title

About the Author

Born of Ibo parents in Nigeria, Buchi Emecheta is widely known for her multilayered stories of black women struggling to maintain their identity and construct viable lives for themselves and their families. She writes, according to The New York Times, with "subtlety, power, and abundant compassion." Her numerous novels include The Slave Girl, The Family, Bride Price, and The Joys of Motherhood.

Reviews

Although her characters speak in authentic patois and authoritatively convey the grim travails of a dysfunctional emigre family in England, Emecheta's novel is sapped by polemic and an overkill of disaster. When her mother joins her father in London, Gwendolen is left behind in Jamaica, where she is sexually abused by a male friend of her grandmother; disclosure of her crime only brings the child resentment and ridicule. Eventually, Gwendolen's parents send for her, and she arrives in the "Moder Kontry" to care for her younger siblings and receive an education. But school is a hardship: "What nobody realized was the price her dignity as a person was paying. Those who made society's laws are still a long way from knowing that Gwendolen's inability to speak or understand one brand of the English language did not automatically condemn her to be an imbecile. But to keep a school like hers running smoothly and with less friction for all concerned, it was easier for her to be regarded as one." Further humiliations follow when Gwendolen's father molests her, rages when he learns he is not the first to do so, and eventually impregnates her. A Nigerian native living in England, Emecheta wrote The Joys of Motherhood.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: George Braziller Inc.
• Publication date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0807612502
• ISBN 13: 9780807612507
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240