English 226: Emecheta
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After having read a man's point of view on Nigeria in
Achebe's Things Fall Apart, it is interesting to see this
nation and culture through the eyes of a woman. Though more modern in
setting, Buchi Emecheta's ironically-titled novel, The Joys of
Motherhood, is an ideal example. Emecheta is a clever, respected
novelist who grew up in Nigeria before marrying and moving to England.
Several of her novels, all set in Nigeria, have attracted a great deal of
interest throughout the world. Her style is deceptively simple, but her
writing is subtly ironic and full of purpose and contemporary relevance. Texts: We will be reading the print version of The Joys of Motherhood, which is available through MCC's Blue Colt Bookstore. It can also be ordered through a number of other vendors. Here is the page from Bestbookbuys.com on The Joys of Motherhood. Links: Paul Brians' Study Guide on The Joys of Motherhood remains one of the most useful online guides to this work. Professor Brians, of the English Department at Washington State University, provides for his students brief chapter-by-chapter comments and questions that many others have found very useful. You may also find
some useful background information and article excerpts on the Buchi
Emecheta Pages from the African Postcolonial
Literature in English portion of George Landow’s Postcolonial Web. Though some of
the links are out of date, Vicki
Whisler's Joys of Motherhood page
has some accessible biographical material on Emecheta and some commentary on
the novel. It is on the Colonial
and Postcolonial Literary Dialogues site at the University of Western
Michigan. However, the best materials on Emecheta are apparently not available online. But they are available on your computer. Using the off-campus access to the MCC Library’s databases such as Academic Search Premier, the Literary Reference Center, and the Literary Resource Center, you can find some good overviews of Emecheta’s life and work as well as such excellent critical articles as Salome Nnoromele’s “Representing the African Woman: Subjectivity and Self in The Joys of Motherhood.” It’s not a quick read. In fact, if you include the two pages of notes and references at the end, it’s about 12 pages long, but it’s not as difficult to read as many scholarly articles are. Besides, it includes quotes and discussions of other articles on Emecheta, so you end up getting a bit of an overview. And that page of references at the end might help you find an even better article. |
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