A Call for Resurgence:

Feminist Plan of Actions in Buchi Emecheta’s The Bride Price and Joys of Motherhood

Abstract

Feminism aims at addressing the concerns of women across the world. It offers personal, philosophic and political ideologies, theories, strategies and movements to revamp the system that ostracize and subjugate women in every sphere of human society. It attempts to disclose the male chauvinism and the cultural constructions that are embedded in social life and in the literary texts. It analyses the colonial mindset of male sex, the prejudice, and offers effective tools to obtain emancipation for women and opens up the new avenues for women to explore. It doesn’t aim for a world of exclusivism rather strikes a balance to include everyone despite sex difference and calls for building a healthy human society.

Buchi Emecheta is a prominent Nigerian writer of 20th century, of Igbo tribe, whose writings have become phenomenal in the international literary arena today. The principal focus of her writing revolves around the Black African Woman in general and Nigerian woman in particular. It echoes the dreams and aspirations of womenfolk who thrive to reiterate their identity and position in a world of patriarchal dominance. It also attempts to dismantle the myths that have been erroneously constructed on women and calls for investigating the ramifications of the onslaught of male sex over the female sex and offers techniques and plan of actions in breaking the fetters that shackle women. Her writings are profound in character since they are the outcome of her own personal life experiences and they resonate concretely the themes that are pertinent to women such as marginalization of women, racism, bride price, poverty, emancipation and social oppression etc., She has written more than 20 books and all her works render the pangs and pains that women undergo in family and society at large. She doesn’t want her characters to become victims of violence, rather empowers them to rise above the occasion and become victorious.