Second-Class Citizen (1974) was Buchi Emecheta’s second novel. She called it a “documentary novel”, closely based on her life as an immigrant in England in the 1960s. The center of the book is Adah Ofili, a young woman who pursues a series of dreams: to go to school, to win a scholarship and, ultimately, to go to England. On the last, “she dared not tell anyone; they might decide to have her head examined or something”, but when she sees Nigerian educated doctors coming from England to work in Nigeria, she knows she is right.
Adah must forge her own way while complying with local traditions: she marries at a young age (to Francis) and soon has two children. Life in Nigeria is described only partially — her marriage and first job occupy less than a page — and it’s clear that Emecheta, like her heroine, is impatient for life in England. Adah and Francis arrive by boat — “Liverpool was grey, smoky and looked uninhabited by humans” — and head to London, where they struggle to find somewhere to live (“Sorry, No Colored People”).
They end up among other immigrants, but Adah, who had been a member of the elite in their country of origin, is appalled* at having to live alongside Nigerians who were “of the same educational background as her paid servants”. But as Francis points out, “the day you land in England, you are a second-class citizen. So, you can’t discriminate against your own people, because we are all second class.”
*appalled: shocked, horrified
Internet: theguardian.com (adapted).
Based on the text above, judge the following item.
The word might, as used in ‘they might decide to have her head examined or something’ (first paragraph), indicates that having Adah’s head examined was a necessity.
