Reading Order
The Joys of Motherhood Reading Order
The Joys of Motherhood (1979) by Buchi Emecheta is her most celebrated novel and the work that cemented her reputation as one of the most important African women writers of the 20th century — a bitter, ironic title for a story that is anything but joyful, following Nnu Ego from her village in Ibuza through her life in colonial Lagos, where she stakes everything on the children she is expected to produce and on whom she is supposed to depend in her old age, only to discover that the colonial economy has changed the terms of the transaction: her sons go to school, become modern men, move away, marry foreign women, and leave Nnu Ego to die alone by the roadside. Emecheta's formal irony — using the title 'joys of motherhood' for a narrative that systematically deconstructs every supposed joy — is one of the sharpest tools in African women's fiction. The novel traces how colonialism transformed Igbo family structures: in the traditional economy, a woman's investment in many children made sense because children were economic assets who would support parents in old age; in the colonial wage economy, sons are educated, individualized, and oriented toward the modern world rather than the family compound. Nnu Ego is trapped between two systems: traditional enough to define herself entirely through motherhood, modern enough to experience a world where motherhood's traditional rewards have been cancelled. She dies, Emecheta tells us, alone and unloved, and only after her death does she become a goddess to whom women pray for children — the bitter final irony of a woman whose life was consumed by motherhood and who is worshipped only for the fertility she suffered from.
Where to start
The Joys of Motherhood — any Heinemann African Writers Series or George Braziller edition. Read Second-Class Citizen (1974) first if possible; The Joys of Motherhood's Nigerian setting is the counterpart to Second-Class Citizen's London setting.
Complete The Joys of Motherhood Book List
- 1Buy
The Joys of Motherhood
Buchi Emecheta·1979·The novel — Nnu Ego's life in colonial Lagos, her investment in her children, and the bitter irony of her death alone while her children thrive without her; Emecheta's most formally accomplished work. - 2Buy
Second-Class Citizen
Buchi Emecheta·1974·Emecheta's preceding novel — Adah's fight for independence in 1960s London against a husband who destroys her manuscript; the diasporic companion in which Igbo women's experience meets British racism. - 3Buy
Efuru
Flora Nwapa·1966·The first novel published by an African woman — Nwapa's Igbo woman outside conventional marriage; the formal predecessor in African women's fiction that Emecheta extends in The Joys of Motherhood. - 4Buy
So Long a Letter
Mariama Bâ·1979·Bâ's Senegalese epistolary feminist novel published the same year — the companion in African women's fiction; women's sacrifices in African marriage, from Senegalese polygamy vs. Nigerian colonial transformation. - 5Buy
Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe·1958·Achebe's foundational Igbo novel — the male account of the same colonial transformation Emecheta depicts from the female perspective; the context for understanding the traditional Igbo world that colonialism dismantled. - 6Buy
The River Between
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o·1965·Ngũgĩ's early novel — the Gikuyu world in Kenya undergoing the same colonial transformation as Nnu Ego's Igbo world; the East African parallel to Emecheta's West African account of traditional family structures under colonial pressure. - 7Buy
Nervous Conditions
Tsitsi Dangarembga·1988·Dangarembga's Zimbabwean feminist novel — the southern African continuation of the tradition Emecheta and Nwapa established; a young woman's account of education, sexism, and colonial constraint in a different African setting. - 8Buy
Purple Hibiscus
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie·2003·Adichie's debut novel — the contemporary Nigerian feminist novel that follows in Emecheta's tradition; the next generation's account of family, violence, and female survival in Nigeria after independence.
The Joys of Motherhood — Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Joys of Motherhood about?
The Joys of Motherhood follows Nnu Ego from her village in Ibuza to colonial Lagos in the 1930s-1950s. Nnu Ego's first marriage fails because she cannot produce children; her second husband, Nnaife, is a washer-man for a British family in Lagos — a degraded occupation that emasculates him in Igbo terms. Nnu Ego does produce children — many of them — and invests everything she has (including her pride, her health, and her future) in raising and educating them. The novel traces how the colonial economy makes this investment worthless: her eldest son Oshiaju, educated to British standards, emigrates to Canada and marries a Canadian woman; her other sons disperse into the modern world; her daughters are married off. When Nnu Ego is old and sick, she goes home to Ibuza to die and does so alone by the roadside. In a final ironic twist, the community mourns her and begins to worship her as a goddess who grants children to barren women.
What is the novel's critique of traditional motherhood?
Emecheta's critique is structural rather than individual: she is not condemning Nnu Ego for investing in motherhood, nor condemning the children who move away and fail to support her. She is showing how colonialism broke the traditional economic logic of African motherhood. In the traditional Igbo economy, children were economic assets — they worked the land, participated in the compound economy, and supported parents in old age. Investing everything in children was rational because the return was guaranteed by the structure of traditional society. Colonialism destroyed this: it educated children to become modern individuals, oriented toward wage employment and nuclear families, economically integrated into a colonial rather than a traditional economy. The 'joys of motherhood' were real in the traditional world; the colonial economy made them fraudulent.
How does The Joys of Motherhood compare to Achebe's account of Igbo society?
Emecheta is explicitly writing the female counterpart to Achebe's Things Fall Apart (1958), which narrates colonial transformation through a male protagonist (Okonkwo). Achebe's Okonkwo suffers from the same colonial transformation but as a man — his traditional masculinity (strength, warrior status, wealth in yams) is made irrelevant by the colonial economy. Emecheta's Nnu Ego suffers the same transformation from the female perspective — her traditional femininity (motherhood, domestic labor, the compound economy) is also made irrelevant by colonialism. The gender difference is significant: where Okonkwo's tragedy is spectacular (he kills a colonial messenger and hangs himself), Nnu Ego's is invisible (she dies alone by the road, unmourned until the community needs a fertility goddess). Emecheta is pointing out that male tragedy receives the epic treatment while female tragedy goes unnoticed.
What is the significance of the opening and closing scenes?
The novel opens with an unusual scene: Nnu Ego, in Lagos in 1934, attempts to drown herself after her newborn baby dies. She is stopped, and the novel then flashes back to her village life and forward to her years in Lagos. The opening scene's dramatic attempt at suicide contrasts with the end of the novel, where Nnu Ego dies quietly, alone, by the roadside, unspectacularly — not in grief for a lost child but in neglect. The arc from the dramatic opening (a mother's grief for her dead baby) to the quiet closing (an old woman's neglected death) is Emecheta's formal statement of the novel's thesis: the traditional joys of motherhood (the intense connection between mother and child that leads Nnu Ego to attempt suicide) are real, but the colonial economy has made them ultimately worthless as a foundation for a life.
What should I read after The Joys of Motherhood?
After The Joys of Motherhood, Emecheta's Second-Class Citizen (1974) is the essential companion in its account of an Igbo woman in London. Flora Nwapa's Efuru (1966) is the predecessor in African women's fiction. Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart is the male counterpart in its account of the same colonial transformation. Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions is the southern African successor in the same tradition. For contemporary Nigerian women's fiction, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus and Sefi Atta's Everything Good Will Come are important successors.
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