Second Class Citizen is well regarded as a story of overcoming struggle and of contemporary African life. On the novel’s publication in 1974, Hermione Harris wrote in Race & Class: “Of the scores of books about race and black communities in Britain that had appeared during the 1960s and early 1970s, the great majority are written by white academic ultimately concerned with the relationship between white society and black ‘immigrants’. Few accounts have emerged from those on the receiving end of British racism or liberalism of their own black experience. On the specific situation of black women there is almost nothing. Second Class Citizen is therefore something of a revelation”.