Customer Reviews

The Joys of Motherhood

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Buchi Emecheta, writes with piercing teeth and gouging fingers: irony, sarcasm, and anger are her appendages: orphan, arranged marriage object, immigrant to England, five children by 22, marriage terminator, single mother acquiring degree in sociology, messaged writer.

The setting for "The Joys of Motherhood" is in Lagos, Nigeria, between the 1930's and the 1960's. Lagos, the capital of the British colony of Nigeria, is primarily Yoruba; the main characters are Igbo.

Change from chiefdoms to the city: "Men here [in Lagos] are too busy being white men's servants to be men. We women mind the home. Not our husbands. Their manhood has been taken away from them. The shame of it is that they don't know it. All they see is the money, shining white man's money"

Community versus individual: The scene is an attempted suicide in Lagos. "You are simply not allowed to commit suicide in peace, because everyone is responsible for the other person. Foreigners may call us a nation of busybodies, but to us, an individual's life belongs to the community not just to him or her. So a person has no right to take it while another member of the community looks on. He must interfere, he must stop it happening."

Religion: "Her new Christian religion taught her to bear her cross with fortitude. If hers was to support her family, she would do so, until her husband found a new job."

War: The context is the forced draft of Nigerians into the army during World War II: "For me to be married to a soldier, a plunderer and killer of children.... I don't know how I would feel if I was asked to kill people who had never offended me."

Men and Women: "God when will you create a woman who will be fulfilled in herself, a full human being, not anybody's appendage?"

Motherhood: "When the children were good they belonged to the father; when they were bad, they belonged to the mother. Every woman knew this."

I have to argue with VICTRAV's telling of the book...

Nnu Ego was sent to marry a man she did not know yet - but this was after a failed marriage to a man she did know. Also, Nnu Ego knew her future husbands brother and family - just not him. Yes, Nnu Ego had some struggle in regards to having children but having children is what made her happy and further made her a woman. Her husband, Nnaife, did take another wife, his deceased brothers wife as Ibo custom deemed proper. Adaku - the second wife taken ultimately leaves Nnaife because she doesn't like him. Okpo, the third wife came into their lives when Nnu Ego was reaching her 40's - and instead of offering irrritance like Adaku, offered help to Nnu Ego. Wanting to leave Nnaife and Lagos are thoughts that cross Nnu Ego's mind throughout the entire book but its not until the encarciration of Nnaife that Nnu Ego returns to her home in Ibuza. Having no husband and all her children gone their own ways Nnu Ego's life seems a sad one but in the end, after she passes, her children pay omage to her with "the greatest funeral Ibuza had ever seen." (Emecheta p.224)

A definately important thing to remember when reading this book is not to read it from your culture's eyes but to try and understand another cultures ways.

An indept exposure to the challenges faced by an uneducated african woman determined to survive in colonial Nigeria. A story of a woman who went through the trials of life, first as the apple of her fathers eyes and the most sort after bride. Only to be barren and looses her husband to another woman. To hide her shame, she is married off to a man she has never met in the colonial city of Lagos (Nigeria). Read this book and see how she faces the challenges of living in a strange land and trying to abide by two different cultures. The one she was brought up in, groomed as a true African woman and the one she is forced to live in as an adultrated african, spieced with the inferior ingredients of the colonial masters.. You just might be forced to compare her with your mother. Read this book and understand the true meaning of the word MOTHER.

The Joys of Motherhood follows the life of the daughter of a Great Chief in Nigeria during the first half of the 20th century. Trying to follow the societal norms of the Ibos Nnu Ego goes through a very hard life. Her first arranged marriage was failure because she could not have kids. He second marriage leaves her with many kids but a very difficult life, in which she stays tied to because of tradition. After trying to survive, in the city of Lagos, mostly on her own, she has nine children and in the end goes back to Ibuza, her home. The title "Joys of Motherhood" becomes ironic because she spends her life dedicated to motherhood but in the end, dies alone and miserable. Her children who have become modernized due to the colonization of the British in Lagos, become a series of disapointments for not fulfilling the traditional way of life.

Joys of Motherhood was one of the books I read for my Post Colonial African lit class, and I have to say it was my favourite novel on the course. I could barely put this book down. Emecheta rights in an engaging style that gets the reader wrapped up in the lives of the characters. I found myself cheering on Adaku, hating Oshia and wanting Nnu Ego to break free from the patriarchal system.

This is not the kind of book you read to see how it ends since you know from the beginning it will end in sadness. You read this book only to know the characters and their plight. It even gives you a look at how _men_ are victims of the patriarchal system as well. I fully recommend Joys of Motherhood to anyone who enjoys fully engaging characters.

Buchi Emecheta, a Nigerian sociologist and herself a mother, writes the story of an Ibuzu woman in the years surrounding WWII. In its mix of humor and pathos, deft characterizations and evocation of Nigeria ways, the Joys of Motherhood is a seemingly simple story of a woman trapped by cultural mores and expectations, chief among them that she should find fulfillment in the joys of motherhood. Actually, the story is masterful as Emecheta succeeds in the difficult task of opening a window for the Western reader without condescension, lecturing, preaching or boring her reader. Although with great differences, the book reminded me greatly of Frank McCourt's autobiographical Angela's Ashes, and gave me much the same satisfaction.

The title is ironic, the subject matter is often disturbing and the story is riveting. While reading this fictional novel about a Nigerian woman with 8 children in the 1950's, one cannot help but wonder how much of the book is autobiographical. Emecheta effectively portrays women as like slaves, valued for their production and reproduction. While disturbing in its reality it renews awareness of the continuing difficult role of women in many countries of the world today. I recommend this thought provoking and informative book for daughters, mothers, grandmothers and yes, to all of the men in their lives.

This book has a lot of strengths. One of the main ones is that it's immensely readable and enjoyable, and it definitely holds your attention and makes you want to know the ending, although the book is quite sad. Another of the qualities that recommend it is the sensitive portrayal the author devotes to depicting the changed position of many African women after the labor and family transformations that took place during colonialism.

The degraded heroine of the book is contrasted with her mother's fiery independence. Emecheta's main character suffers because her husband feels degraded by the "effeminate" labor his colonist employers foist on him (laundry) and takes it out on her; she is also oppressed because her entire worth is based on her child bearing capacities-or at least that's what she's told. Although she eventually has an enormous family, they repay her with ingratitude and she dies miserable. Ironically, women suffering with infertility pray to her after her death-they think she can help them because of her fecundity-and they are unrewarded.

However, I do have some problems with the book. This is not a subtle portrait and does read like a melodrama. The characters are not very nuanced and that there might be diversity in women's experiences is not suggested, although Ibo women (Emecheta is Ibo and so are the characters in this story) and men had and have a variety of different roles and relationships. Here, women are victims, men are oppressors. There IS a way to portray women's marginalization without one-dimensional characters.

I wonder if some of this is due to Emecheta's feelings, which she has expressed at various times, of a certain degree of contempt for her own culture. While some feel she is a "traitor" for revealing injustices that Africans commit against one another, I certainly don't think that's a valid criticism. Wonderful books have been written by Africans dealing with African perpetrators committing crimes against African victims. However, her one-sided approach detracts from the strengths of her novel and from the realism it attempts.

True motherhood comes with a curious sense of maturity, sacrifice and love for the innocent infant that has been ingrained in a woman from man's primitive days. I found this book to be very exciting from the very first page to the very last and sighed when I finished the story.After reading it, I got a better understanding of Motherhood. I It comes with other books that I enjoyed in the way motherhood is treated such as The Usurper and Other Stories. The day to day huddles of domesticity are beautifully told here.

An easy to read story that provides a realistic and convincing background on both the high value Africans place on children as well as the high costs of motherhood on women. Very illuminating