Reading in The Library

Reading in the Library
This extract is from the semi-autobiographical novel Second Class Citizen, by Nigerian
writer Buchi Emecheta, published in 1974. Here the novel’s protagonist, Adah, working to
support her family, gets a job at Chalk Farm Library in Camden:
She concentrated on working and enjoying her new job. It was at the Chalk Farm
Library that she met Peggy, the Irish girl with a funny hairstyle, who was
heartbroken because her Italian summer-holiday boyfriend did not fulfil his
promises. Peggy had gone on holiday the summer before, just to enjoy the Italian
sun and the Roman scenery. She got involved with this handsome Italian youth,
surprisingly tall for an Italian, but Peggy said he was Italian. It was love at first
sight, and many promises were made. Peggy was a library assistant and the young
man was reading Engineering in a university, the name of which Adah had
forgotten. The young man seemed to have forgotten the promises he had made
Peggy, and she was threatening to go to the address he gave her to find him and
give him a piece of her mind. The talk was always of this young man and what
Peggy was going to do to him, and how she was going to get her own back. Peggy
never really told Adah what it was she had given him that pained her so much.
But she let Adah know that she gave so much that she would regret it all her life.
She was twenty-three, not very beautiful but small and fun to be with.
Then there was the big boss, Mr Barking. He was thin and bad-tempered, but
without a touch of malice. His daughter had married a wortheless fellow and he
was determined to squash that marriage if it cost him his life. The daugher was ill
because of the mental cruelty being inflicted on her by this no-good husband. Mr
Barking never talked about his wife; he had got so used to her being there, in his
home, that she was never discussed. That wife of his made good chicken
sandwiches. Adah had seen Mr Barking munching and muching away at lots of
chicken sandwiches in the staff room, and sometimes they made her feel like
having one.
Bill was a big handsome Canadian; Adah did not know why he had come to
England in the first place, because he looked down on anything English. He used
the word ‘Britisher’ for the English, just like the Americans do. Even his Christmas
cake was flown out from Canada. His mother sent him clothes, food, everything.
He would not study for the British Library Association Examinations because he
did not trust the British system of education. He had married the children’s
librarian the year before. Her name was Eileen and she was tall and beautiful; a
more perfect match you could never imagine. But Bill knew a little about
everything. He liked black writers. Adah did not know any black writers apart
from the few Nigerian ones, like Chinua Achebe and Flora Nwapa, and she did not
know that there were any other black writers. Bill tut-tutted and at her and told
her what a shame it was that an intelligent black girl like her should know so little
about her own black people. Adah thought about it and realised that Bill was
right. He was an intelligent man, that Canadian, and Adah liked him a lot. During
the staff break he would talk and expand on authors and their new books. He
would then request it and then Camden Borough would buy it, and he would read
it first; then he would pass it on to Adah and she would pass it to Peggy. Peggy
would pass it to any other members of the staff who were in the mood to read
books. It was through Bill that Adah knew of James Baldwin. She came to believe,
through reading Baldwin, that black was beautiful. She asked Bill about it and he
said, did she not know that black was beautiful?
Bill was the first real friend she had had outside her family. She had a tendency to
trust men more because her Pa never let her down. She had already cultivated
the taste for wide reading, and Bill, whose wife was expecting a second child
within two years of their marriage, was always in the mood for literary talk. Adah
was fascinated. She even started reading Marx and was often quoting to herself
that if the worst came to the very worst she would leave Francis with her children
since she had nothing to lose but her chains.
Buchi Emecheta, Second Class Citizen [1974] (London: Heinemann, 1994), pp. 159-161.

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