The Joys of Motherhood - Buchi Emecheta

 

The Joys of Motherhood is a novel written by Buchi Emecheta. It was first published in London, UK, by Allison & Busby in 1979 and was reprinted in Heinemann's African Writers Series in 2008. The basis of the novel is the "necessity for a woman to be fertile, and above all to give birth to sons".^[1] It tells the tragic story of Nnu-Ego, daughter of Nwokocha Agbadi and Ona, who had a bad fate with childbearing. This novel explores the life of a Nigerian woman, Nnu Ego. Nnu's life centres on her children and through them, she gains the respect of her community. Traditional tribal values and customs begin to shift with increasing colonial presence and influence, pushing Ego to challenge accepted notions of "mother", "wife", and "woman". Through Nnu Ego's journey, Emecheta forces her readers to consider the dilemmas associated with adopting new ideas and practices against the inclination to cleave to tradition. In this novel, Emecheta reveals and celebrates the pleasures derived from fulfilling responsibilities related to family matters in child bearing, mothering, and nurturing activities among women. However, the author additionally highlights how the 'joys of motherhood' also include anxiety, obligation, and pain.

In the words of critic Marie Umeh, Emecheta "breaks the prevalent portraitures in African writing.... It must have been difficult to draw provocative images of African motherhood against the already existing literary models, especially on such a sensitive subject." (Wikipedia)

         

The Joys of motherhood from yeshab68

Petals of Blood - Ngugi Wa Thing'o

Petals of Blood is a novel written by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and first published in 1977. Set in Kenya just after independence, the story follows four characters – Munira, Abdulla, Wanja, and Karega – whose lives are intertwined due to the Mau Mau rebellion. In order to escape city life, each retreats to the small, pastoral village of Ilmorog. As the novel progresses, the characters deal with the repercussions of the Mau Mau rebellion as well as with a new, rapidly westernizing Kenya.

The novel largely deals with the scepticism of change after Kenya's independence from colonial rule, questioning to what extent free Kenya merely emulates, and subsequently perpetuates, the oppression found during its time as a colony. Other themes include the challenges of capitalism, politics, and the effects of westernization. Education, schools, and the Mau Mau rebellion are also used to unite the characters, who share a common history with one another. (Wikipedia)

Here I am sharing the brief overview of the novel with some critical analysis:

 

        

Petals of blood from yeshab68

Live Burial - Wole Soyinka - poem explanation

 

 

Live Burial[YB1] 

Wole Soyinka

 

Sixteen paces
By twenty-three (dimension of Soyinka’s prison).[YB2]  They hold
Siege (Barrier) against humanity
And Truth
[YB3] Employing time to drill through to his sanity [YB4] 

Schismatic (Controversial)
Lover of Antigone (Greek mythology) !
[YB5] You will? You will unearth
Corpses of yester-
Year? Expose manure (dung) of present birth?

Seal him live
In that same necropolis (cemetery).
May his ghost mistress
Point the classic
Route to Outsiders' Stygian [YB6] (gloomy and dark) Mysteries.

Bulletin[YB7] : (statements or news from the prison)
He sleeps well, eats
Well. His doctors note
No damage[YB8] 
Our plastic (fake) surgeons tend his public image[YB9] .

Confession[YB10] 
Fiction ? Is truth not essence
Of Art, and fiction Art? (Fiction is art – truth is part of art – fiction is truth)

Lest (in case) it rust (decay)
We kindly borrowed his poetic licence.[YB11] 

Galileo[YB12] 
We hoped he'd prove - age
Or genius may recant (reject/renounce/abandon) - our butchers (killers of these genius people)
Tired of waiting
Ordered (without proving anything with facts); take the scapegoat (innocents), drop the sage (learned).

Guara'l The lizard:
Every minute scrapes (fixes)
A concrete mixer throat (tobacco).[YB13] 
The cola slime (spit)
Flies to blotch (stain) the walls in patterned grime (dirt)

The ghoul: (eats dead body/ghost)
Flushed (red-faced) from hanging, sniffles[YB14] 
Snuff (consumes drug), to clear his head of
Sins -- the law
Declared -- that morning's gallows load (the man who was hanging) were dead of.

The voyeur: (Sadist)
Times his sly patrol (to take a round)
For the hour upon the throne (toilet seat[YB15] )
I think he thrills
To hear the Muse's[YB16]  (Greek mythology) constipated groan

---

 [YB1]Suggests the torture he gone through the imprisonment of two years – the military government in Nigeria tried to impose on the mind of poet

 [YB2]Description of the prison – only 16 paces to live for 23 months.

 [YB3]The walls are referring here the barrier to the freedom of poet – it was a kind of barrier towards humanity and truth

 [YB4]These months were difficult for him to pass – it was enough for him to harm his sanity

 [YB5]Antigone performed her brother’s funeral – her uncle was resisting this because of her duty – Christianity cannot allow the burial of the one who commits suicide – Poet connects himself with Antigone

 [YB6]Stygian is again a Greek mythology’s reference – the river is for deal – it is an underworld for the dead – isolates dead souls from living

 [YB7]News or statement given by the officials of prison

 [YB8]Officials were giving statements that the prisoner – poet is having a good life in prison – even medical check-ups also says the same thing

 [YB9]The word ‘plastic’ here refers to lie – surgeons were spreading untruthful conditions of prisoners – guard used to beat the poet but just to maintain the image they were not revealing the truth

 [YB10]Confession word refers to the real reason of the imprisonment of the poet – supplying arms to one side – but officials created a story that the poet was supporting the rebel in the war

 [YB11]Satire on officials/police/guards – he imagines them saying these lines – they have taken the right of Soyinka to write poetry

 [YB12]He refers to Galileo and says that his genius has got rejected by the authorities – they killed the people who were telling the truth by making them scapegoats

 [YB13]Description of a first guard – he eats tobacco and spits on the wall – that makes the wall dirty – the condition in which the poet is living

 [YB14]The second guard who was on duty for the hanging/morning gallows – the government killed the man who was hanging – this was inhuman and the guard was aware with this – to get rid out of the thoughts of committing the sins he used to consume drugs/snuff

 [YB15]The third guard is having a sadist mentality – when poet sits on toilet seat which he refers to ‘throne’ here – he comes at the same time –and poet observes that he feels thrill (which makes him sadist) when he watches poet like this

 [YB16]Daughters of Zeus (group of nine daughter) – goddesses on poetry inspiration – here Muse refers to poet himself

The Piano and The Drums - Gabriel Okara - Explanation of poem

 

The Piano and The Drums[YB1] 

Gabriel Okara

When at break of day (sense of beginning) at a riverside (life)

I hear jungle drums telegraphing [YB2] (giving a message)

the mystic rhythm (Spiritual - supernatural), urgent, raw (fresh)

like bleeding flesh , speaking of

primal (primitive/original/early) youth and the beginning,

I see the panther ready to pounce,

the leopard snarling about to leap

and the hunters crouch with spears poised.[YB3]  (African jungle – culture – as primitive)

 

And my blood ripples (blood flow), turns torrent (blood flows with rush),

Topples (falls into memories) the years and at once I’m 

in my mother’s laps a suckling (infant);

at once I’m walking simple

paths with no innovations

rugged (rough), fashioned with the naked

warmth (connection with nature and love for culture) of hurrying feet and groping hearts (hearts full of feelings)

in green leaves and wild flowers pulsing.[YB4] 

 

Then I hear a wailing (crying) piano

solo speaking of complex ways (Western culture)

in tear- furrowed concerto[YB5]  (seductive but multi-layerd);

of far away lands (Western land – difference between the culture)

and new horizons with

Coaxing (sweet-talking) diminuendo (a decrease in loudness in a piece of music), counterpoint (a melody in conjuction with another melody), 

Crescendo [YB6] (increasing and leading to the climax), but lost in the labyrinth of its complexities, it ends in the middle of a phrase at a dagger point

And I lost (because of the mixing) in the morning mist[YB7] 

of an age at a riverside keep

wandering in the mystic rhythm

of jungle drums and concerto[YB8] .

 

---

 [YB1] [YB1]Piano represents Western culture and Drums represents African culture

Expresses his feelings through music

 [YB2]The word is different than the other words – drums do not beat or create sounds but Okara says that they are giving a message to the nature and humankind

 [YB3]Effects of drum to the poet and other natural elements – he imagines and remembers – how this sound is effecting jungle residents.

 [YB4]In the core of African culture nature beats – there are heart beats of nature in Africa – description of African land

 [YB5]A concerto is a classical music composition that highlights a solo instrument against the background of a full orchestra. Bach is one composer known for writing concertos. In a concerto, a piano, violin, flute, or other instrument plays solo parts that are backed up or highlighted by an orchestra.

 [YB6]Words like Coaxing diminuendo – crescendo here represents the complexity of music (culture) and the difficulty they face to understand it.

 [YB7]When the sound of drum is mixed with piano – poet lost himself – which represents loss of identity – culture because of mixing it with the other

 [YB8]Poet warns those who choose white culture over their own culture and advises to choose and follow any one culture than taking both together and creating a kind of chaos.

You Laughed and Laughed and Laughed - Gabriel Okara - Explanation of poem

 

 

You (White people) Laughed and Laughed and Laughed (White people are making fun of dance, color, culture, sounds and actions of Black people)

Gabriel Okara

 

In your (White) ears my (Black people) song
is motor car misfiring (car fails to start)[YB1] 
stopping with a choking cough; (harsh voice of engine or break)
and you laughed and laughed and laughed.

In your eyes my ante-
natal walk (Clumsy) was inhuman, passing
[YB2] your ‘omnivorous (undiscriminating) understanding’
and you laughed and laughed and laughed[YB3] 

You laughed at my song, (Emotions – pains)
you laughed at my walk. (Way of walking and physical structure)

Then I danced my magic dance (Cultural dance - magical)
to the rhythm of talking drums pleading[YB4] , but you shut your eyes
and laughed and laughed and laughed

And then I opened my mystic
inside wide like the sky,[YB5]  (heart of the land – African land evoked wonder)
instead you entered your
car and laughed [YB6] and laughed and laughed

You laughed at my dance,
you laughed at my inside. (Culture that made black people)
You laughed and laughed and laughed.

But your laughter was ice-block
laughter (emotionless) and it froze your inside froze (lost warmth)
your voice froze your ears (sense of understanding)
froze your eyes and froze your tongue. (Sense of expression/expressing)

And now it’s my turn to laugh;
but my laughter is not
ice-block laughter. [YB7] For I
know not cars, know not ice-blocks.[YB8] 

My laughter is the fire
of the eye of the sky,(sun) the fire
of the earth, the fire of the air,(lightening)
the fire of the seas and the
rivers fishes animals trees
[YB9] and it thawed (softened/melted) your inside,
thawed your voice, thawed your
ears, thawed your eyes and
thawed your tongue. (Attitude of white is melted)

So a meek (gentle) wonder held
your shadow and you whispered; (White realized the wonder)
‘Why so?’
And I answered:
‘Because my fathers and I
are owned by the living
warmth of the earth (mother earth)
through our naked feet.’[YB10]  (Close communication with nature – absorbs the values of nature)

---

 [YB1]White people are comparing the sound of Black people’s songs of emotions or pains with misfiring of car, because they used to criticize the voice of black people as harsh and annoying.

 [YB2]Black people have more powerful body than Whites, and that’s why they have different style of walking – White people make fun of that style of walking

Ante-natal walk – walk of a pregnant woman

 [YB3]Here poet satirizes white people because they reflect their point of views as they are having every kind of understanding – universal understanding towards everything.

Omnivorous is also an animal that eats plants and animals both.

 [YB4]Culture – Drum sounds can make Black people dance and they used to dance freely – White people used to call them barbarians because of their traditional dance

 Shutting of eyes and ears can consider here as insult

 [YB5]Black people opened the land of Africa which is full of wonders – Beauty of Nature – to make White aware about Black people’s connection with nature

 [YB6]White people ignored the beauty of land and entered in their car and again started laughing

 [YB7]White’s attitude towards Black versus Black’s attitude towards white

 [YB8]Blacks are not materialistic or living luxurious life- They still have warmth in their heart – they are not like white - Cold

 [YB9]Connection with nature – That created a fire by which they can melt the ice-block laughter of whites – Black people are deeply connected with natural elements

 [YB10]Organic life – Nature as father – rawness – organic life