Gender Politics in Buchi Emecheta's The Joys of Motherhood (1979) and Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions (1988)

Ever since Nigeria's Flora Nwapa started Writing about gender issues in the nineteen fifties, all novels by African female writers have likewise dealt with the place of women in African society. Buchi Emecheta and Tsitsi Dangarembga continue to deal with these questions in their respective novels. Both talk about the impacts of tradition and modernism on the African peoples. The two books depict women as victims of tradition which gives supremacy to men, as well as victims of modernism which has typically only worsened the plight of women. The two authors' approaches to these conflicts differ from one another, making a comparison of their two novels interesting. Emecheta's The Joys of Motherhood focuses on the negative effects of the traditional conception of motherhood on African women, whereas Dangarembga centers her analysis on the inner conflicts inherent in the changes brought about by colonization. The two writers describe the complexity of the status of African women on the continent and offer different solutions for their characters' struggles for equality and respect.