Depictions of Violence and Joy in Postcolonial Literature .
KAYA PURCHASE
“ To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you . To seek joy in the saddest places .” Arundhati Roy
Motherhood is universally violent . It involves the agony of childbirth and the self-sacrifice of raising children . However , Buchi Emecheta ’ s The Joys of Motherhood explores how motherhood was disproportionately violent for women living in 1930s Nigeria . While traditional Ibo values placed demands on women to produce many children , regardless of their own desires , colonialism intensified this oppression by complicating gender roles and forcing Nigerian families into poverty . The ironic title juxtaposes the joy found in love for one ’ s children against the violence of obligatory motherhood , which curtails a woman ’ s ability to freely experience such maternal joy . It satirises the manner in which Emechata ’ s Ibo culture professed that motherhood should be a woman ’ s primary , if not only , source of joy . Indra Sinha ’ s Animal ’ s People features a more literal form of violence . Set in the fictional town of Kaufpur , India , the novel is inspired by the real Bhopal disaster of 1984 . Its protagonist , Animal , injured in the disaster has a twisted spine which forces him to walk on all fours . Both novels feature institutional violence , but for Animal violence is also localised in the body , causing physical pain as well as ostracism and poverty . Whilst Nnu Ego is defined by her ability to rear children , Animal is defined by the limits of his body . Nevertheless , Animal ’ s glorious defiance against a victimising Western gaze , his use of black humour and profane language operate as instruments of counter-violence towards neocolonialism and sources of cathartic and resistant
joy in a context of relentless violence . Similarly , Emecheta manages to capture fleeting moments of joy in her narrative , which serve to humanise her protagonist , Nnu Ego and the other mothers with whom she forms friendships . These snippets offer a glimpse of the agency that could be possible for Ibo women if permitted to pursue their own life choices .
An important source of joy for Nnu Ego is the friendships that she forges with other mothers in Lagos . When grieving the death of her first son she is visited by Ato who brings along with her laughter that explodes in on Nnu Ego , rupturing her grief and reminding her of her identity as more than a “ failed ” mother . Upon discovering that her son has passed away , Nnu Ego attempts suicide . Sadia Zulfiqar writes , ‘ Motherhood is so deep-seated in Nnu Ego ’ s psyche that the alternative to the loss of her infant son is the loss of self . That is why Emecheta argues for motherhood to be an experience of choice , not an imposition ( Zulfiqar , ‘ Changing concepts of motherhood and marriage in the fiction of Buchi Emecheta ’, 2016 , p . 69 ). The fact that Nnu Ego feels such erasure of self is proof of the violence of a cultural code that prioritises the bearing of sons as the primary measure of worth for a woman . Such ideology has so shaped Nnu Ego ’ s psychology that she was prepared to enact physical violence on herself to match the level of violent psychological erasure she felt . Ato ’ s laughter is depicted as utterly unfamiliar to Nnu
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