The headstrong progenitor: notes on the Igbo motherhood representation in Buchi Emecheta’s and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s prose

Abstract

This work aims to analyze aspects of the Igbo motherhood representation in two narratives by Nigerian female authors, Buchi Emecheta’s novel The joys of motherhood (1979), and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s short story The headstrong historian (2009), evaluating how the protagonists’ mothering experience reflects the common desires and goals that unite (or segregate) them as women with the same ethnic background. We also intend to weigh on the female representations that deny the idealization of the perfect mother, assessing how these “others” help to reinforce the strict behavioral standard imposed to all, which relegates them to a quest for a guideline or prototype of demeanor that oftentimes hinders their own self-fulfillment. For such, we count on the help of theoreticians such as Umeh (1996), Stratton (1994), Robolin (2013), Christian (1994), and Segato (2012), among others.