Buchi Emecheta, in full Florence Onyebuchi Emecheta.Igbo writer whose novels deal largely with the difficult and unequal role of women in both immigrant and African societies and explore the tension between tradition and modernity.
Emecheta married at age 16, and she emigrated with her husband from Nigeria to London in 1962. She began writing stories based on her life, including the problems she initially encountered in England. These works were first published in New Statesman magazine and were later collected in the novel In the Ditch (1972). That work was followed by Second-Class Citizen (1974), and both were later included in the single volume Adah’s Story (1983).Those books introduce Emecheta’s three major themes: the quests for equal treatment, self-confidence, and dignity as a woman. Somewhat different in style is Emecheta’s novel Gwendolen (1989; also published as The Family), which addresses the issues of immigrant life in Great Britain, as do Kehinde (1994) and The New Tribe (2000).
Most of Emecheta’s other novels—including The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977), The Joys of Motherhood (1979), Destination Biafra (1982), and Double Yoke (1982)—are realistic works of fiction set in Nigeria. Perhaps her strongest work, The Rape of Shavi (1983), is also the most difficult to categorize. Set in an imaginary idyllic African kingdom, it explores the dislocations that occur when a plane carrying Europeans seeking to escape an nuclear disaster crashe.
Emecheta wrote an autobiography, Head Above Water (1986), and several works of children’s and juvenile fiction. She was made an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) in 2005.
Buchi Emecheta used to say, “I work toward the liberation of women but I’m not a feminist I’m just a woman.”
The Joys of Motherhood is a novel written by Buchi Emecheta. It was first published in London, UK, by Allison & Busby in 1979 and was first published in Heinemann's African Writers Series in 1980 and reprinted 1982, 2004, 2008.
The book opens as Nnu Ego runs away from her home in Lagos, Nigeria, where her first baby has just died she has decided to commit suiside.The story flashes back to the story of how Nnu Ego was conceived. Her father, Agbadi, though he has many wives, is in love with a proud and haughty young woman named Ona. Ona refuses to marry him because she is obligated to produce a son for her father's family line, and not a husband's. But when Agbadi is almost killed in a hunting accident, Ona nurses him back to health and becomes pregnant with his child. She agrees that if it's a daughter, the child will belong to Agbadi.
Emecheta also attacks Ibos who take use of masculine power to oppress women, wives, and daughters. Though women can bear children and raise them, the "Joys of Motherhood" can also be painful and anxiety-inducing. One of Emecheta's most important and well-known works, The Joys of Motherhood, criticises colonialism, tradition, and women's roles, and how they effect one woman, Nnu Ego, and her family.
Q-1) "The most celebrated female character in African creative writing is the African mother." by Marie A. Umeh according to this, is the character of Nnu Ego celebrating motherhood or not? Explain.
The title of the book, which is taken from Flora Nwapa's novel, Efuru, is then significant and bitterly ironic. Dazzled by ambitious sons educated outside of traditional Igbo values, Nnu Ego breaks down and her old secure world gives way to a new one. Fully conscious of the irony in her life, she says,
"A woman with many children could face a lonely old age and maybe a miserable death all alone, just like a barren woman"
Emecheta constructs a totally different set of economic, socio-political and cultural an essential which diverge from the existing literary models.
The character of Nnu Ego celebrating motherhood. The novel The Joy of Motherhood is the story of female protagonist Nnu Ego, who enjoys her life being mother of many children in order to have a comfortable old age. She is ready to sacrifice herself in order to feed and give clothes to children, Emecheta tries to offer the meaning of motherhood through her character Nnu Ego.
Without motherhood, Nnu Ego feels empty and struggled very hard to be a mother.Emecheta wants to transmit the point that bearing more than five or six children do not mean that a mother is going to be prosperous in her old age. She examines the institution of motherliness, unpleasant experiences mixed up in motherliness, and its shock on the minds of the Nigerian women. According to Katherine Frank, "The complete futility of motherhood that we find in The Joys of Motherhood is the most heretical and radical aspect of Emecheta's vision of the African Women".
Nnu Ego had to experience patriarchal slavery throughout her life and died in solitude. All mothers, Ona,Akadu and Nnu Ego, have been victimized in the patriarchal,and traditionally strong Ibo society. But Emecheta’s Nnu Ego challenges the conservative conception ,producing numerous children will give a woman much joyful.
Nnu Ego is not a radical ,she dutifully accepts and fulfills her role as a woman in Ibo society. Her initial quest is for justification and validation. When she cannot conceive with her first husband, Amatokwu, the marriage is dissolved and she is filled with apprehension and shame. When her second marriage, to Nnaife, produces a highly prized son, she realizes the happiness denied her, only to have her joy shattered when Ngozi dies in infancy. The death of the child becomes, by extension, the death of Nnu Ego. She sees no reason to live if she cannot succeed in the single role of bearing and rearing children. Slowly, she comes to new realizations about what is truly important to her, and these epiphanies force her to examine her role and function as a woman in Ibo society.
Nnu Ego's husband Nnaife blames her for their children's defection from traditional values, failing to understand his own role. Much to Nnu Ego's frustration, Nnaife does not acknowledge that his own drinking, lack of financial support, and selfishness contributed to the children's selfishness. Nnu Ego suffers most of all, working day and night at her thankless task of helping her children have all the best advantages and succeed in life.
Conclusion
The actual condition of women is portrayed through the character of Nnu Ego also makes clear that the joys of motherhood include not only happiness but also pain and suffering.
Word Count :-1,500
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