Motherhood and intersectionality in black women’s literature: an analysis of Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys Of Motherhood and Edwidge Dancticat’s breath, eyes, memory

Abstract

Black female characters in literature have attracted immense interest from both writers and critics, with many scholars exploring the portrayal of black women through the lens of western ideologies on feminism. Within these feminist studies, little research has been carried out on the social and cultural contexts or circumstances that shape motherhood, that is, societal expectations of what black motherhood should entail. Minimal attention has been paid on how these contexts shape black motherhood and the depiction of black mothers in literature in Africa and the Caribbean. This study has attempted to fill this gap by analyzing Edwidge Dancticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory which is set in the Caribbean and partly in the United States, and Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood, based in an African context, in order to understand the portrayal of black motherhood in the two contexts. The study was guided by two objectives; first, to explore the socio-cultural contexts of black mothers in the two novels, and secondly, to analyze black mother characterization in order to get insights into the world of mothers and the environments that shape them into the mothers that they are. Black feminism theory as advanced by Kimberle Crenshaw was used in this study to analyze data on literary representation of black motherhood. The argument that the experiences of black women are shaped by a combination of race, class and gender, resulting in discrimination of black women was crucial in the analysis, in order to reveal what influences the character of black mothers in the two contexts. Literature on studies concerning black mothers, black motherhood, women in literature, socio-cultural contexts of women’s writings and experiences of women in literature has been reviewed in order to reveal the gap that this study fills. A qualitative research design was used and analysis of the two novels was done using close textual reading. Data was collected from the two primary texts and secondary sources emanating from the internet and the library, such as literary journals and periodicals. The study used literature review matrix and theoretical framework matrix as the main tools for data collection. The major conclusions of the study are that: black mothers resist oppressive structures in the society in their quest for their identities in the two novels under study, black mothers go through emotional and physical pain in their struggle to create a good life for their children, mothers go against cultural expectations to be good mothers to their children, the society fails to view mothers as sexual beings once they deliver babies or are nursing and this affects them as mothers and finally, various factors such as religion, education, culture, gender and morality intersect to cause oppression on black mothers. This study contributes to the ongoing debate on women, gender and motherhood studies.