Abstract
This work aims to analyze aspects of the Igbo motherhood representation in two narratives by Nigerian female authors, Buchi Emecheta’s novel The joys of motherhood (1979), and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s short story The headstrong historian (2009), evaluating how the protagonists’ mothering experience reflects the common desires and goals that unite (or segregate) them as women with the same ethnic background. We also intend to weigh on the female representations that deny the idealization of the perfect mother, assessing how these “others” help to reinforce the strict behavioral standard imposed to all, which relegates them to a quest for a guideline or prototype of demeanor that oftentimes hinders their own self-fulfillment. For such, we count on the help of theoreticians such as Umeh (1996)UMEH, Marie. Procreation Not Recreation: Decoding Mama in Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood. In: UMEH, Marie (Ed.). Emerging Perspectives on Buchi Emecheta. Trenton: Africa World Press, 1996, p. 189-206., Stratton (1994)STRATTON, Florence. Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender. Nova York/Londres: Routledge, 1994., Robolin (2013)ROBOLIN, Stéphane. Introduction. In: EMECHETA, Buchi. The joys of motherhood. 2. ed. New York: George Braziller, 2013, p. 1-6., Christian (1994)CHRISTIAN, Barbara. An angle of seeing: motherhood in Buchi Emecheta’s Joys of Motherhood and Alice Walker’s Meridian. In: GLENN, Evelyn Nakano; CHANG, Grace; FORCEY, Linda Rennie (Eds.). Mothering: Ideology, Experience, and Agency. Nova York/Londres: Routledge, 1994, p. 95-120., and Segato (2012)SEGATO, Rita Laura. Gênero e colonialidade: em busca de chaves de leitura e de um vocabulário estratégico descolonial. Tradução de Rose Barboza. e-cadernos CES [on-line], Coimbra, Editora Centro de Estudos Sociais da Universidade de Coimbra, n. 18, 2012, p. 106-131. Acesso em: 21 jan. 2020. Disponível em: http://journals.openedition.org/eces/1533.
http://journals.openedition.org/eces/153...
, among others.
Keywords
Buchi Emecheta; Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; Gender; Motherhood; Colonization