Western Feminist Consciousness in Buchi Emecheta's The Joys of Motherhood

Abstract

Feminism is a collection of movements which struggles for women's rights. Focusing on gender as a basis of women's sexual oppression, feminist scholarship attempts to establish equal rights for women politically, economically, socially, personally, etc. The Joys of Motherhood highlights Buchi Emecheta's critical view toward colonialism and racism affecting Third world women's lives. Besides this, Emecheta goes further to display African women's invisibility and marginalization-which were out of sight for a long time-in terms of some aspects of Western feminist discourse. Her creative discourse, in this regard, casts further light upon the issue of gender oppression in African feminist study. Hence, this study attempts to examine the way in which Emecheta furthers Western feminist ideology.