Women's Studies Commons^™

Breaking The Rule Of Silence: Childbirth And Gendered Power In Efuru And The Joys Of Motherhood, Sunday Elliott Uguru

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study examines the thematic preoccupation of childbirth in the formative period of feminist discourse in African literature through a critical study of selected novels of Igbo women of southeastern Nigeria. The novels studied represent the earliest published African texts in English by women. The period under focus falls within the emerging stage of Nigerian literary tradition in its written form with a dominant presence of men. This study investigates the women novelists' perspective toward the failure of male authored works to represent women's childbirth experience. Through a critical reading of Flora Nwapa's Efuru and Buchi Emecheta's The Joys of …