Is the Hood in Womanhood the Hood in Motherhood?: An Analysis of Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood

This paper aims to bring to the fore the plight of women in Nigeria, particularly in Igbo land in a manner that proposes a paradigm shift. The issue of men setting the standards for women has been a dominant global discourse. However, this paper focuses on the Nigerian situation, while making references to feminist criticism in general. The status of women being seen but not heard, lacking significance, dignity, and personality and being unable to contribute meaningfully to decision-making in the home and community have been foregrounded in the works of Mariama Ba, Ama-Ata Aidoo, Buchi Emecheta, Flora Nwapa, Nadine Gordimer, Bessie Head, and also, Diasporic African female novelists such as Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Houston among several others. The current study uses the Womanist Theory to engage the politics of sexism as well as class consciousness as crucial interlocking factors in the narrative of Buchi Emecheta. The research methodology adopted is qualitative. When African women’s books are studied, it is usually in the context of Black Literature, which largely ignores the implications of sexual politics. Feminist scholars and critics have raised concerns regarding the stereotyping of the presentation of gender roles and gender assignments in African Literature. This lopsided representation of the African woman is what some female writers have risen up to dispel. Buchi Emecheta in her epic novel, The Joys of Motherhood, has undertaken to present the domestic lives of women in a gender-charged and predominantly patriarchal Igbo society.