Connections between Brazil and Nigeria: the representation of motherhood in Um defeito de cor and The Joys of Motherhood

Abstract

From the perspective of transnational studies (DAVIES, 1986) of African feminisms (NNAEMEKA, 1997; OYEWUMI, 1999), and of intersectional studies (HOOKS, 1984; HILL-COLLINS, 2002), the present study aims at a comparative analysis of black motherhood in two different contexts – Brazil and Nigeria –, more specifically in the works Um defeito de cor and The Joys of Motherhood, by writers Ana Maria Gonçalves (1970) and Buchi Emecheta (1944-2017). In the aforementioned novels, the lives of two female protagonists – Kehinde and Nnu Ego – are narrated, both inserted within a context which associated the mother figure with the exercise of a monolithic cultural construct, one revolving around the ideal of selfless motherhood. The female writers problematize such ideal, offering representations that confront and ressignify the idea of motherly love itself, in contexts of slave exploitation, in the case of Kehinde, and of the colonial experience, as far as Nnu Ego is concerned. In this way, Gonçalves and Emecheta unveil new possibilities of representing and living black motherhood, highlighting factors such as autonomy, African cosmology, agency and resistance. Although both novelists write from distinct contexts and continents, their narratives seem to offer a deconstructed notion of motherhood and mothering practices.