Os espaços de opressão em As Alegrias da Maternidade, de Buchi Emecheta

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the novel The Joys of Motherhood (1979) from the perspective of intersectionality, the issues of subalternity, and the concepts of colonialism and post-colonialism, structuring itself in an analysis of the different spaces of the narrative as markers of stages of the protagonist's life and, consequently, of the different nuances of the system of oppression that subjugates the character for being a poor black woman in a rural Nigeria and in a colonized urban Nigeria between the 1930s and 1960s. In addition to the analysis of the character of the oppressions suffered by the protagonist in the different spaces, we seek to understand if and how she responds to these oppressive events in the course of the narrative. To this end, we conducted studies on the wealth of critical acclaim, such as those of Umeh (1982), Nnoromele (2002), Derrickson (2002) and Helaly (2016), we discussed questions about black feminism and intersectionality based on the works of hooks (2000), Davis (2017), Henning (2015) and Crenshaw (2012), and we approached conceptualizations and reflections about the concepts of colonialism and post-colonialism of Loomba (2005) and Walsh; Mignolo (2018), the images of the colonizer and the colonized by Memmi (2007), the concepts of ambivalence, hybridism and in-between by Bhabha (1998) and the concept of subalternity by Spivak (2010). Trapped between the patriarchal tradition of the rural community and the patriarchal capitalist colonization of the urbanized city, the protagonist finds herself “in-between” (Bhabha, 1998) of articulation of cultures, in which oppression of the figure of women is catapulted to more degrading levels.