My Husband Burnt My First Book And That’s When I Knew I Had to Escape or Die- Buchi Emecheta (Famous Nigerian Writer)

I got married at sixteen, and by twenty-two, I had five children and a life that looked complete from the outside but felt like slow death on the inside. When we moved to London, I thought things would change, but they didn’t.

I was more isolated than ever, raising children alone while my husband controlled everything the money, the decisions, even my right to dream.

Still, I dreamed. I wrote in secret, during stolen moments between chores and cries, pouring my soul into a manuscript I called The Bride Price. It was fiction, yes, but it was also my truth about the pressure on women, the pain of silence, the weight of tradition. And then one day, my husband found it. He didn’t argue. He didn’t speak. He burned it.

I stood there watching my words turn to ash, and something inside me cracked. Not just from pain, but from clarity. That was the moment I knew: if I didn’t leave, I would disappear not in body, but in spirit. So I left.

I took my five children and walked into uncertainty, with no money, no support, just a voice I refused to bury. London didn’t welcome me. Racism closed doors. Poverty knocked me down. But I kept writing in libraries, in laundromats, in the middle of chaos.

When Second-Class Citizen was published, the world listened, but many in my community did not. They called me bitter, ungrateful, a disgrace. But I had not lied. I had only told the truth.

I didn’t write to shame anyone. I wrote to survive, to be seen, to remind women like me that silence is a slow death and we all deserve to live loudly, fully, truthfully.

So if you’re reading this and you’re stuck in a story that’s killing you speak. Write. Leave. Begin again. Let the fire that tried to silence you be the flame that sets you free.