ABSTRACT
The concept of motherhood is of central importance to the philosophies of both African and African-American peoples. In exploring the theme of motherhood in the Ibo Nigerian writer Buchi Emecheta's novel, The Joys of Motherhood, and the African-American writer Alice Walker's novel, Meridian, in these two writers' common African cultural roots, their people's experiences of enslavement, racism, sexism, and colonialism as these experiences affect their respective interpretations of motherhood. Central to both novels is how the mother-daughter relationship is critical to the society's continuation of the ideology of motherhood. Meridian's and Nnu Ego's first experiences of motherhood are both similar and different, in much the same ways that their cultures are similar and different. The Joys of Motherhood protests the lack of value Nnu Ego's society places on her life; Walker's Meridian both protests Meridian's powerlessness and traces her journey to spiritual health.
