The Joys of Motherhood
by Buchi Emecheta
Motherhood as the only wage she was offered.
For you if
you've been told that sacrifice is what love looks like.
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Nnu Ego is told her worth is the number of sons she bears, so she bears them, in a village and then in colonial Lagos, scrubbing and trading to feed them while her husband, a laundryman for a white household, drifts away. The title is a bitter joke. Emecheta, who raised five children alone as a student in London, wrote a novel about what a mother is asked to give up, and what the family, the church and the colonial economy take from her for free.
Where This Book Lives
- Themes
- colonialism's legacyfamily bondsgrief and lossmother-daughter relationshipsmotherhoodwomen's lives
- Topics
- british colonial nigeria
Pass with note. Quietly devastating rather than graphic, with domestic hardship, child death and polygamy depicted plainly. Emecheta was a Nigerian-born British writer with no documented concerns. Fills the gap between Things Fall Apart and Americanah on women's lives under colonial rule. Close relatives: Changes, Purple Hibiscus, Nervous Conditions (suggested 10-14) and So Long a Letter (suggested 10-14).
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