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@article{187153,
        author = {Baneshwar Gorain},
        title = {Subaltern Feminism in Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood and Second-Class Citizen: A Study of Gender, Voice, and Resistance},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2025},
        volume = {12},
        number = {6},
        pages = {3806-3810},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=187153},
        abstract = {Buchi Emecheta, one of the most powerful voices in African literature, is known for her honest portrayal of women’s lives in colonial and postcolonial societies. Her novels reflect the experiences of women who are silenced by both patriarchal traditions and colonial oppression. This research focuses on two of her most celebrated works, The Joys of Motherhood and Second-Class Citizen, to examine how Emecheta’s fiction represents the struggles, endurance, and gradual empowerment of subaltern women. In Second-Class Citizen, Emecheta’s protagonist Adah Okafor fights against gender and racial discrimination while trying to build a life in England. Her journey from Nigeria to London symbolizes the larger struggle of African women seeking identity and self-worth in a world that constantly marginalizes them. In The Joys of Motherhood, Nnu Ego’s devotion to her children and family exposes the irony of traditional motherhood, showing how cultural expectations often trap women in endless cycles of sacrifice and pain. The study applies Subaltern Theory (Gayatri Spivak) and African Feminism (Molara Ogundipe and Chikwenye Ogunyemi) to explore how Emecheta’s female characters rise from silence to self-awareness. It argues that Emecheta creates a unique form of African subaltern feminism that values the lived experiences, struggles, and moral strength of women rather than abstract Western ideals. Her works give a powerful voice to those long ignored, turning silence into strength and suffering into self-realization.},
        keywords = {Buchi Emecheta, Subaltern Feminism, African Feminism, Postcolonial Literature, Gender and Resistance.},
        month = {November},
        }