Quick Facts
Biography
Florence Nwanzuruahu Nkiru Nwapa ( ) (13 January 1931 – 16 October 1993) was a Nigerian author best known as Flora Nwapa, who has been called the mother of modern African literature. The forerunner to a generation of African women writers, she is acknowledged as the first African woman novelist to be published in the English language in Britain and achieve international recognition, with her first novel Efuru being published in 1966 by Heinemann Educational Books. While never considering herself a feminist, she is best known for recreating life and traditions from an Igbo woman's viewpoint.
Nwapa also is known for her governmental work in reconstruction after the Biafran War. In particular she worked with orphans and refugees who were displaced during the war. Further, she published African literature and promoted women in African society. She was one of the first African women publishers when she founded Tana Press in the 1970s.
Biography
Early years and education
Nwapa was born in Oguta, in south-eastern Nigeria, the eldest of the six children of Christopher Ijeoma (an agent with the United Africa Company) and Martha Nwapa, a teacher of drama. Flora Nwapa attended school in Oguta, Port Harcourt and Lagos. She went on to earn a BA degree from University College, Ibadan, in 1957. She then went to Scotland, where she earned a Diploma in Education from Edinburgh University in 1958.
Teaching and public service
After returning to Nigeria, Nwapa joined the Ministry of Education in Calabar as an Education Officer until 1959. She then took employment as a teacher at Queen's School in Enugu, where she taught English and geography from 1959. She continued to work in both education and the civil service in several positions, including as Assistant Registrar, University of Lagos (1962–67). After the Nigerian civil war of 1967–70, she accepted cabinet office as Minister of Health and Social Welfare in East Central State (1970–71), and subsequently as Minister of Lands, Survey and Urban Development (1971–74).
Writing and publishing
Nwapa's first book, Efuru, was published in 1966 and is considered a pioneering work as an English-language novel by an African woman writer. She had sent the transcript to the already famous Nigerian author Chinua Achebe in 1962 who replied with a very positive letter and even included money for the postage to mail the manuscript to the English publisher Heinemann.
It was followed by the novels Idu (1970), Never Again (1975), One is Enough (1981), and Women Are Different (1986). She published two collections of stories – This Is Lagos (1971) and Wives at War (1980) – and the volume of poems Cassava Song and Rice Song (1986). She is also the author of several books for children.
In the 1974 she founded Tana Press and in 1977 the Flora Nwapa Company, publishing her own adult and children's literature as well as works by other writers. She gave as one of her objectives: "to inform and educate women all over the world, especially Feminists (both with capital F and small f) about the role of women in Nigeria, their economic independence, their relationship with their husbands and children, their traditional beliefs and their status in the community as a whole". Tana has been described as "the first press run by a woman and targeted at a largely female audience. A project far beyond its time at a period when no one saw African women as constituting a community of readers or a book-buying demographic."
Later years
Nwapa's career as an educator continued throughout her life and encompassed teaching at colleges and universities internationally, including at New York University, Trinity College, the University of Minnesota, the University of Michigan and the University of Ilorin. She said in an interview with Contemporary Authors, "I have been writing for nearly thirty years. My interest has been on both the rural and the urban woman in her quest for survival in a fast-changing world dominated by men."
Flora Nwapa died from pneumonia on 16 October 1993 in a hospital in Enugu, Nigeria, at the age of 62.
Selected bibliography
- Novels
- Women are Different, Enugu: Tana Press, 1986; Africa World Press, 1992, ISBN 9780865433267
- One Is Enough, Enugu: Flora Nwapa Co., 1981; Tana Press, 1984; Africa World Press, 1992, ISBN 9780865433229
- Never Again, Enugu: Tana Press, 1975; Nwamife, 1976; Africa World Press, 1992, ISBN 9780865433182
- Idu, Heinemann African Writers Series, No. 56, ISBN 0-435-90056-0; 1970
- Efuru, Heinemann Educational Books, 1966; Waveland Press, 2013, ISBN 9781478613275
- Short stories/poems
- This Is Lagos and Other Stories, Enugu: Nwamife, 1971; Africa World Press, 1992, ISBN 9780865433212
- Cassava Song and Rice Song, Enugu: Tana Press, 1986
- Wives at War and Other Stories, Enugu: Nwamife, 1980; Flora Nwapa Co./Tana Press, 1984; Africa World Press, 1992, ISBN 9780865433281
- Children's books
- The Adventures of Deke, Enugu: Flora Nwapa Co., 1980
- The Miracle Kittens, Enugu: Flora Nwapa Company, 1980
- Journey to Space, Enugu: Flora Nwapa Company, 1980
- Mammywater, 1979; Enugu: Flora Nwapa Company, 1984
- Emeka, Driver's Guard, London: University of London Press, 1972; Enugu: Flora Nwapa Company, 1987
Legacy
Flora Nwapa is the subject of a documentary entitled The House of Nwapa, made by Onyeka Nwelue, that premiered in August 2016.
On 13 January 2017, Nwapa's birthday was marked with a Google Doodle.