Buchi Emecheta
- Buchi Emecheta’s full name was Florence Onyebuchi Emecheta, and she was born on 21 July 1944 in Yaba near Lagos, Nigeria to Igbo parents.
- She died on 25 January 2017 in London, England at the age of 72 after suffering a stroke.
- Emecheta was a novelist, playwright, autobiographer, and children’s writer whose works explore the challenges faced by women in both African and immigrant contexts.
- She moved to London, England in 1962 after marrying Sylvester Onwordi and later became a single mother of five, supporting her family while pursuing her writing and education.
- Emecheta earned a degree in Sociology from the University of London, which helped shape her insightful portrayals of social inequality and identity.
- Her first novel, In the Ditch (1972), and early works like Second-Class Citizen (1974) were based on her own experiences as an African woman in Britain.
- She wrote over 20 books tackling themes such as motherhood, female subjugation, cultural conflict, and independence through education.
- Emecheta’s novels often highlight the tension between tradition and modernity, especially for women in postcolonial societies.
- Her most famous work, The Joys of Motherhood (1979), critically examines the social expectations and harsh realities of motherhood in colonial Nigeria.
- She received significant recognition, including the Jock Campbell Prize for The Slave Girl and was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2005 for her contributions to literature.
The Joys of Motherhood
Q. 1) If Nnu Ego were living in 21st-century urban India or Africa, how would her understanding of motherhood, identity, and success change?
Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood presents Nnu Ego as a tragic figure whose life is structured almost entirely by patriarchal definitions of womanhood, motherhood, and social worth within colonial and postcolonial Nigeria. Her suffering emerges not from personal failure but from a cultural system that equates a woman’s value with reproductive success and maternal sacrifice. Relocating Nnu Ego to a 21st-century urban context—whether in contemporary India or Africa—invites a critical re-examination of how motherhood, identity, and success would be understood under conditions of neoliberal capitalism, urban precarity, and reconfigured patriarchy. While surface conditions of modernity may appear to offer liberation, Emecheta’s narrative suggests that Nnu Ego’s tragedy would not disappear; rather, it would be reshaped into new, less visible forms of gendered exploitation and emotional dispossession.
Motherhood: From Sacred Duty to Negotiated Labour
In The Joys of Motherhood, motherhood is constructed as a woman’s primary and often sole pathway to social recognition. Nnu Ego’s despair following infertility and child loss is rooted in a cultural logic that renders her a “failed woman” when she cannot reproduce (Emecheta, ch. 5). Even when she becomes a mother, her labour is totalizing—economic, emotional, and physical—yet remains socially invisible. The novel repeatedly emphasizes that “the joy of being a mother was the joy of giving all to your children,” a maxim that ultimately consumes Nnu Ego’s life without reciprocal care (Emecheta, p. 224).
In a 21st-century urban Indian or African setting, motherhood would no longer be exclusively defined as biological destiny, but it would still function as an intensive, gendered form of labour. Urban mothers are expected to combine caregiving with wage labour, informal work, and emotional management—roles Nnu Ego already performs through petty trading and domestic sacrifice in colonial Lagos (Emecheta, ch. 4). Modernity does not erase maternal burden; it redistributes it under the language of “choice” and “responsibility.” Nnu Ego’s maternal labour would likely become more economically productive yet emotionally fragmented, as success would be measured by children’s academic mobility rather than communal survival. Her identity as the “mother of clever children” already anticipates this logic (Emecheta, ch. 16).
Identity: From Communal Validation to Isolated Selfhood
Nnu Ego’s sense of identity in the novel is almost entirely externally produced. Her worth is affirmed or denied by husbands, children, and community elders. Even moments of agency—such as engaging in petty trade—are framed as extensions of maternal duty rather than personal ambition (Emecheta, ch. 8). The novel underscores that Nnu Ego “had never really made many friends, so busy had she been building up her joys as a mother” (Emecheta, p. 224). Her identity collapses once her children leave, revealing the fragility of a self constructed solely through relational roles.
In a contemporary urban context, Nnu Ego might encounter narratives of individual selfhood and female autonomy, yet these would not necessarily translate into lived empowerment. Urban life often intensifies isolation, especially for working-class women whose labour sustains families without generating personal recognition. While modern discourse encourages women to “find themselves,” structural constraints—economic precarity, unpaid care work, and persistent patriarchal expectations—would likely limit Nnu Ego’s capacity to claim an autonomous identity. Her emotional breakdown following her children’s migration already mirrors modern forms of maternal abandonment, where success is spatially and emotionally distanced from caregiving (Emecheta, ch. 17).
Success: From Children-Centred Worth to Neoliberal Achievement
In Emecheta’s narrative, success is measured almost entirely through children: their survival, education, and eventual ability to provide material recognition, symbolized by Nnu Ego’s elaborate funeral (Emecheta, p. 224). Ironically, this success arrives only after her death, exposing the hollowness of a system that defers maternal reward indefinitely. Her sons’ global mobility—education abroad and economic independence—does not translate into emotional reciprocity or care.
In the 21st century, success would likely be reframed through economic productivity and professional achievement. Yet for someone like Nnu Ego, whose life is shaped by reproductive and domestic labour, such metrics would remain largely inaccessible. Neoliberal capitalism valorizes independence while relying on invisible care work, reproducing gendered inequalities under the guise of progress. Nnu Ego’s tragedy—dying alone despite fulfilling every social expectation—would persist in altered form, as maternal sacrifice would be normalized but unsupported.
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Conclusion: Resolution or Reconfiguration?
Relocating Nnu Ego to a 21st-century urban India or Africa would not resolve her tragedy; it would reconfigure it. While contemporary contexts offer expanded vocabularies of choice, autonomy, and success, they continue to rely on women’s unpaid emotional and reproductive labour. Emecheta’s novel already anticipates this transformation, portraying a woman whose sacrifices fuel social mobility yet leave her personally depleted. Nnu Ego’s life demonstrates that modernity does not dismantle patriarchy—it refines it. Her suffering, whether in colonial Lagos or a globalized city, exposes the enduring cost of defining women’s worth through care without care in return. As The Joys of Motherhood ultimately suggests, the tragedy lies not in tradition alone, but in systems—old and new—that demand everything from women while promising fulfillment that never arrives.
Q.2) Buchi Emecheta presents motherhood as both fulfilment and burden. Do you think the novel ultimately celebrates motherhood or questions it?
Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood (1979) is set against the backdrop of colonial and early postcolonial Nigeria, a period marked by rapid urbanisation, economic instability, and the collision of indigenous patriarchal traditions with colonial capitalist structures. Through the life of Nnu Ego, Emecheta examines motherhood as the central organising principle of female identity within Igbo society. Far from offering a sentimental celebration of maternal joy, the novel interrogates the social, emotional, and economic costs exacted from women in the name of motherhood. Emecheta’s central concern is not whether motherhood brings fulfilment—since it undeniably does—but whether that fulfilment justifies the profound sacrifices demanded of women under patriarchy and colonial modernity. Ultimately, The Joys of Motherhood does not simply celebrate motherhood; it fundamentally questions and critiques it by exposing its contradictions and systemic injustices.
Motherhood as Fulfilment: Social Validation and Female Identity
Within the socio-cultural framework of the novel, motherhood functions as the primary source of social legitimacy for women. Nnu Ego’s early anguish over infertility illustrates the extent to which a woman’s worth is measured by her reproductive capacity. When she fails to conceive in her first marriage, she is cast off as a “failed woman,” internalising the belief that “without a child, she was nothing” (Emecheta, p. 56). Motherhood, therefore, is not merely a personal desire but a cultural obligation tied to honour, survival, and recognition.
Once Nnu Ego becomes a mother, she gains social validation and a sense of purpose. The birth of her sons secures her position within her husband’s household and restores her dignity within the community. Emecheta repeatedly shows that motherhood offers emotional fulfilment through continuity and belonging: children are viewed as extensions of the self and as guarantees of future security. Nnu Ego believes that by raising successful children, she is “investing” in her own old age (Emecheta, p. 101). This logic reflects a communal worldview in which motherhood ensures lineage, memory, and survival beyond the individual woman’s lifespan.
Motherhood also provides Nnu Ego with a coherent identity. In a world that offers women few alternative avenues for self-definition, being a mother allows her to endure hardship with moral purpose. Even her pride in being a “mother of clever children” signals a form of fulfilment rooted in maternal achievement (Emecheta, p. 188). These moments might suggest celebration, but Emecheta carefully frames them as culturally conditioned satisfactions rather than freely chosen joys.
Motherhood as Burden: Economic Hardship and Emotional Exhaustion
Running parallel to motherhood’s promise of fulfilment is its reality as an overwhelming burden. Emecheta exposes how motherhood under colonial capitalism becomes a site of exploitation, particularly for working-class women like Nnu Ego. The economic demands of raising many children in urban Lagos push her into relentless labour—petty trading, domestic work, and constant emotional caregiving—without security or recognition (Emecheta, pp. 82–101).
Crucially, motherhood does not shield Nnu Ego from poverty; it intensifies it. Each additional child increases her vulnerability rather than her power. Her body becomes a site of continuous sacrifice, marked by exhaustion, repeated childbirth, and emotional depletion. Emecheta dismantles the romantic ideal of maternal selflessness by showing how it is sustained by patriarchal expectations that normalise female suffering. Nnu Ego is expected to endure because “a woman’s pride is her children,” even when that pride costs her health and autonomy (Emecheta, p. 63).
Emotionally, motherhood isolates Nnu Ego. She invests all her affection, hope, and identity in her children, leaving no space for personal fulfilment beyond them. When her sons migrate abroad and her daughters marry into other families, Nnu Ego is left desolate. Her death—alone by the roadside, “with no child to hold her hand” (Emecheta, p. 224)—is the novel’s most devastating indictment of the maternal ideal. The promised reward of motherhood is endlessly deferred.
Individual Desire versus Communal Definitions of Womanhood
A central tension in the novel lies between Nnu Ego’s individual emotional needs and the communal definition of womanhood imposed upon her. While she occasionally yearns for rest, companionship, or recognition beyond motherhood, such desires are systematically suppressed. The community values her not as a person but as a function—mother, bearer, nurturer.
Emecheta underscores this tension through irony. Nnu Ego’s funeral is described as the grandest Ibuza has ever seen, a public affirmation that she “had it all” (Emecheta, p. 224). Yet this posthumous celebration cruelly contrasts with her lived experience of neglect and loneliness. The community’s insistence that she should be satisfied exposes the ideological violence of communal norms that prioritise symbolic honour over lived well-being.
Importantly, Emecheta does not reject motherhood outright. Instead, she critiques the structures that deny women the ability to experience motherhood without erasure. Nnu Ego’s tragedy lies not in loving her children, but in being denied any identity beyond that love.
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Conclusion: Strategic Ambivalence, Not Celebration
The Joys of Motherhood ultimately does not celebrate motherhood in a conventional sense. Nor does it simply condemn it. Rather, Emecheta strategically exposes motherhood as an ambivalent institution—capable of emotional fulfilment yet structurally designed to exhaust and erase women. By tracing Nnu Ego’s life from hopeful young bride to forgotten mother, the novel dismantles the myth that maternal sacrifice is inherently rewarding.
The title itself is deeply ironic. The “joys” of motherhood exist largely as cultural rhetoric, sustained by patriarchy and communal expectation rather than by women’s lived realities. Through Nnu Ego’s unacknowledged suffering and lonely death, Emecheta fundamentally questions whether motherhood, as socially organised under colonialism and patriarchy, truly serves women at all. The novel’s power lies in this refusal of easy answers: motherhood is neither wholly celebrated nor entirely rejected, but exposed as a site of profound contradiction—where love and loss, pride and pain, fulfilment and exploitation coexist uneasily.
Q. 3) How is motherhood portrayed in a film/TV serial/advertisement/web series (Add two to three examples), and how is it similar to or different from Nnu Ego’s experience in ?
Motherhood is a socially and culturally constructed concept that operates not only within literature but across diverse visual media. In texts and screens alike, maternal roles are shaped by ideological expectations, economic structures, and gender norms that reflect broader socio-political power relations. Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood (1979) situates motherhood within colonial and postcolonial Nigeria, where a woman’s identity and social worth are tightly bound to her reproductive success and persistent maternal labour. Emecheta’s portrayal critiques how patriarchy and economic precarity render maternal fulfilment inseparable from burden: motherhood is honoured as indispensable yet achieved at profound personal cost. Comparing this literary experience with contemporary representations in films, web series, and advertisements illuminates both continuities and distinctions in how maternal roles are idealised or problematised under different cultural conditions.
Mothers in Indian Cinema: Filmmaking and Maternal Ideology
Indian cinema has long depicted motherhood as central to a woman’s identity, often celebrating self-sacrifice, emotional labour, and nurturance. Historically, mainstream Bollywood films have presented mothers as emotionally resilient and selfless figures whose primary role is to sustain the family through moral strength (Jhamtani 2016; as in Deewaar, Karan Arjun, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham). Recent cultural commentary highlights how this archetype persists, with mothers portrayed as anchors of affection and endurance, shaping family narratives and foregrounding maternal love as a core value (Times of India, 2025) .
In the 2017 Hindi thriller Mom, the central character Devki engages in extreme measures to protect and avenge her stepdaughter after sexual violence. Scholarly analysis of Mom underscores that motherhood in the film is depicted through intense maternal devotion and aggressive protection, demonstrating a mother’s emotional investment that transcends biological ties while also mobilising violence to secure justice for her child (Fitria 2025) . This representation emphasises the emotional fulfilment and moral agency associated with motherhood but also reveals the pressure on mothers to shoulder violence and trauma on behalf of their children.
A contrasting recent Indian example is the short film Natkhat (2020), which focuses on a mother teaching her young son about gender equality. The narrative frames motherhood not only as care and protection but as a site of social pedagogy, challenging patriarchal norms by foregrounding maternal agency in transforming gendered behaviour within the domestic domain (Wikipedia Natkhat) . Here motherhood intersects with feminist critique: it problematises traditional gender hierarchies by positioning the mother as an agent of change rather than merely a figure of sacrifice.
Western and Global Cinematic Representations
In global popular film, motherhood is often portrayed with narrative tension between emotional fulfilment and societal expectations. Films like Bad Moms (explored in cultural analysis) deliberately challenge conventional ideals of maternal self-sacrifice by showcasing mothers rejecting normative constraints of domesticity and “good” motherhood roles (Rahayu et al. 2019) . These representations reflect a growing discourse in contemporary media that questions maternal ideals, emphasising individual desire, agency, and the complexity of maternal identity rather than pure altruistic duty.
While these depictions occur in different cultural contexts, they share thematic concerns: motherhood is represented as deeply meaningful yet fraught with emotional labour, social pressure, and negotiation between personal identity and reproductive roles.
Comparing Media Mothers with Nnu Ego’s Experience
Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood portrays Nnu Ego’s maternal life within colonial Igbo society as a complex interplay of fulfilment and sacrifice. Nnu Ego’s identity is almost entirely defined by motherhood; her social recognition, economic efforts, and emotional self are inseparable from her maternal role (Emecheta, chs. 4–10). The novel exposes how patriarchy and economic precariousness position maternal labour as expected yet unrewarded: she works tirelessly for her children, enduring hardship and emotional exhaustion, only to be neglected in her old age (Emecheta, pp. 188, 224).
Contemporary cinematic representations reflect similar tensions between emotional fulfilment and social constraint. Indian films often valorise the mother’s devotion, casting maternal figures as moral centres of the family. However, unlike Nnu Ego—whose labour lacks autonomy and is embedded in structural poverty—cinematic mothers such as Devki in Mom or the protagonists of Natkhat retain narrative agency, shaping events actively around their children or social messages. Still, patriarchal expectations persist; in Mom, Devki’s fight is necessitated by a violent social context that fails to protect children, placing the burden of justice on the mother rather than institutions—a dynamic that resonates with Nnu Ego’s burden of care in the absence of social support.
Moreover, advertisements and commercial media often idealise maternal roles, reinforcing myths of maternal perfection and domestic nurturance. Historical analyses of Indian television commercials show how media codes emphasise domesticity and the selfless mother figure, perpetuating hegemonic norms that link womanhood to caregiving roles (Roy 1998) . This idealisation parallels the cultural rhetoric of motherhood in Emecheta’s narrative: motherhood is socially celebrated, yet the material conditions of maternal life remain unexamined.
At the same time, some contemporary media narratives diversify motherhood by depicting single mothers, stepmothers, or maternal figures operating beyond traditional frameworks. Such portrayals sometimes emphasise personal fulfilment, individual desires, and gender role negotiation, which differ from the more rigid expectations placed on Nnu Ego. Films like Bad Moms highlight maternal frustrations with domestic burdens and celebrate autonomy, challenging traditional maternal expectations even as they reveal the ongoing emotional labour associated with motherhood (Rahayu et al. 2019) .
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Conclusion: Continuities and Transformations in Maternal Representation
In both visual media and The Joys of Motherhood, motherhood remains a site of ambivalence, shaped by cultural norms and ideological pressures. Contemporary films and web texts both reinforce and problematise maternal roles: many uphold romanticised ideals of selflessness, while others critique the constraints imposed by patriarchy and demand agency for maternal characters. This constellation reflects an evolving but persistent maternal ideology where emotional fulfilment coexists with burden, sacrifice, and structural expectation.
Compared with Nnu Ego’s experience—where motherhood is socially necessary yet materially unrewarded—media representations today often grant mothers greater narrative agency and complexity. However, persistent themes of emotional labour, societal expectation, and gendered sacrifice reveal that contemporary portrayals do not fully transcend patriarchal constraints; they instead repackage them in aesthetically varied forms. Thus, while visual media may offer broader interpretations of motherhood, the fundamental struggle between identity, agency, and social worth that Emecheta critiques continues to resonate in contemporary maternal narratives.
References :
Emecheta, Buchi. The Joys of Motherhood. George Braziller, 1979. Internet Archive,https://archive.org/details/joysofmotherhood00emec
Fitria, Rika. “The Representation of Motherly Love in the Main Character in the Indian Thriller Film Mom (2017).” ResearchGate, 2025.https://www.researchgate.net/publication/396916315_The_Representation_of_Motherly_Love_in_the_Main_Character_in_the_Indian_Thriller_Film_Mom_2017
Mom. Directed by Ravi Udyawar, performances by Sridevi, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, and Akshaye Khanna, Boney Kapoor Productions, 2017.
Natkhat. Directed by Shaan Vyas, performance by Vidya Balan, 2020.
Rahayu, Siti Nur, et al. “Challenging the Ideal of Motherhood in Contemporary Cinema: A Study of Bad Moms.” Scribd, 2019. https://www.scribd.com/document/689691590/125950167
Roy, Ananya. “Images of Domesticity and Motherhood in Indian Television Commercials: A Critical Study.” ResearchGate, 1998. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228023532_Images_of_Domesticity_and_Motherhood_in_Indian_Television_Commercials_A_Critical_Study
“Mothers Who Shaped Bollywood Movies with Silent Strength and Selfless Love.” The Times of India, 2025. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/hindi/bollywood/news/mothers-who-shaped-bollywood-movies-with-silent-strength-and-selfless-love/photostory/122410279.cms
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