Rethinking Motherhood through Afrofeminism

Reading Jennifer Makumbi's The First Woman

Bibliographic Data

ID2173337
AuthorsDina Ligaga (0000-0002-1264-4298, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa)
Year2023
Volume35
Issue2
Pages141-151
Publication date2023-04-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of African Cultural Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1369-6815 • E-ISSN: 1469-9346
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13696815.2023.2186376
OpenAlexW4365511233
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited4

In this article, I read Jennifer Makumbi's novel The First Woman (2020), which I argue combines African feminism and indigenous knowledge to generate alternative narratives of motherhood in the absence of the main character's biological mother. I argue that Makumbi rethinks motherhood through an afrofeminist lens to complicate the idea of the ideal mother as self-sacrificing and sacred. In the novel, Makumbi intentionally re-engages the myth of origin to figure women as fluid and complex people who do not always subscribe to ideal notions of motherhood and womanhood. The novel, therefore, opens up the possibility of competing notions of motherhood that embrace indigenous conceptions and philosophies of communal care as practised in most rural economies in Africa. Such interventions allow Makumbi to interrogate and suggest possibilities for re-reading gendered roles of motherhood, as well as African womanhood, while at the same time dealing with issues of class as defined through colonial modernity

Aesthetics · Art · Colonialism · Epistemology · Feminism · Ideal (ethics · Indigenous · Literature · Modernity · Mythology · Narrative · Political science · Reading (process · Sociology · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies · Sex work and related issues · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy

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