Representing the African Woman: Subjectivity and Self in The Joys of Motherhood

Abstract

The Joys of Motherhood has been called Buchi Emecheta's most outstanding novel. Beyond exhibiting “the power of characterization, manipulation of point of view and narrative method,” the novel offers a sustained exploration of the African woman's experience, a much-needed theme in current African literary discourse (Palmer 33). The paramount issue that still needs to be considered, however, is whether the academy today has a clearer picture of the conditions of African women than it had more than two decades ago when Maryse Conde spoke out against the “heap of myths […] rapid generalizations, and patent untruths” that have clouded the personality and the inner reality of African women and called on African women to speak for themselves (132). I find it troubling that even as African women are beginning to speak for themselves and to write about their lives, the popular misconception of African women as slaves, brutalized and abused by a patriarchal society, still overwhelmingly defines Western critical attitudes.