Buchi Emecheta’s ‘The Joys Of Motherhood’

Awoman is more than her womb. This is the lesson that Buchi Emecheta’s novel The Joys of Motherhood impressed on me when I first encountered it in my second year of secondary school. A simple idea then and now, yet it remains charged with socio-political tension both in Nigeria as well as in the diaspora. Especially as conversations about reproductive justice and the state’s role in controlling women’s reproductive capacities continues to become polarized and politicized on numerous stages.

It has been more than four decades since the publication of Emecheta’s novel yet the issues it attends to are far from resolved. In 1979, when The Joys of Motherhood was released, second-wave feminism which had largely centred the voices and perspectives of middle-class White women was coming to an end. Meanwhile, what we might refer to as Nigerian feminism today, was burgeoning with the establishment of the political group, Women in Nigeria, in 1983, four years after the publication of Emecheta’s fifth novel. The Joys of Motherhood could be considered as one of the forebears of feminist issues on reproductive justice and culture within the rich Nigerian literary tradition. On par with Flora Nwapa’s 1966 Efuru.

However, it is worth noting that Buchi Emecheta might have disagreed with the feminist label while more strongly identifying with Black womanism as described by Alice Walker—especially given Walker’s nuanced work on race and class. Nonetheless, Emecheta’s oeuvre serves as a foundation for what many Nigerians practice and understand today as feminism. This necessitates reading the Joys of Motherhood as a precursor to contemporary Nigerian feminist texts.

What joys in motherhood?

Though Emecheta’s text is titled The Joys of Motherhood, the story is about anything but. There is little doubt that Emecheta intended the title of her text to be sardonic and mocking. Nnu Ego fervently desires children and dedicates most of her life to having and raising her children. Unfortunately, in the end, Nnu Ego dies alone and is scorned by her village for not being content with the knowledge that her children were successful. Despite having multiple children who become successful professionally due to her sacrifices, they only return after her death to throw her a grand funeral. She never truly experiences the ‘joys’ promised to her.

In a reflection following her death in 2017, Emecheta’s son, Sylvester Onwordi notes that his mother ‘always preferred the life of the family’ and many scholars have noted that Emecheta’s feminist critique is complicated by the central role of family in African cultures. Emecheta’s text is pointedly critical of how the Nigerian society promises a utopic ideal in motherhood. Then and now, childbirth can be viewed as a culturally controlled activity that is inextricably linked with nationalistic goals when analysed on a macro level. For instance, Nigeria’s four-child policy in 1988 as a means of population control—a decision it took in conjunction with a major pillar of the World Bank’s neoliberal structural adjustment programme—is a good example of the state’s role in dictating women’s reproductive choices...

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Buchi Emecheta’s ‘The Joys Of Motherhood’

What joys in motherhood?

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