by Buchi Emecheta
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Product Description
This story of a young mother's struggles in 1950s Lagos is a powerful commentary on polygamy, patriarchy, and women's changing roles in urban Nigeria.
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Average Customer Review:
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
 A book you will not soon forget, 2006-10-17
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.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
The Bitterness of Motherhood, 2005-08-31
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."
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
 Entertaining, but Questionable, 2005-05-05
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.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Very illuminating, 2004-04-11
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
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
 Un-Joys of Motherhood, 2003-12-11
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.
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