The first book I wrote was The Bride Price which was a romantic book, but my husband burnt the book when he saw it. I was the typical African woman, … - Buchi Emecheta

I cannot live up to your standards.

One thing she did know was the greatest book on human psychology is the Bible. If you were lazy and did not wish to work, or if you had failed to make your way in society, you could always say, 'My kingdom is not of this world.' If you were a jet-set woman who believed in sleeping around, VD or no VD, you could always say Mary Magdalene had no husband, but didn't she wash the feet of Our Lord? Wasn't she the first person to see our risen saviour? If, in the other hand, you believed in the inferiority of the blacks, you could always say, 'Slaves, obey your masters.' It is a mysterious book, one of the greatest of all books, if not the greatest. Hasn't it got all the answers?

Yet that intelligent, enterprising, noble-hearted man was a chattel! Liable, by the laws of a country that calls itself civilized, to be sold with horses and pigs!