AiW Guest: Tikondwe Chimkowola-Kadaluka.
Elizabeth Allua Vaah’s Maame (Mawenzi House, 2020) is not just another clichéd tale about motherhood. Rather, it ties together a myriad of issues, with a special focus on how motherhood can be experienced variously in Ghana. It is also a great illustration of existent but fallacious beliefs that define motherhood as the yardstick for womanity that extend across the African continent. This includes Vaah’s interrogation of the assumption that all (African) women have to be, or at the least aspire to be, mothers, an assumption which has found its way into all kinds of our expressions in art, literature and film.
An enforcement of this stereotype, which can be seen widely in African art, paintings, sculptures and music, for example, may be seen as the primary differentiation between African and Western feminisms, particularly those in which the latter was deemed to be exclusionary of motherhood as it is assumed a oppressive instrument barring women from realizing their potential. African Feminist scholars between the late 80s and 90s, such as Ifi Amchiume and Nkolika Aniekwu, have emphasized the need for African women to defend their rights to motherhood, describing mothering as an inherently African way of care that also includes non-maternal care provided to a group or community, as is extrapolated in Ubuntu African Philosophy. Catherine Obianuju Acholonu later coined Motherism in 1995, where the fulfillment of women’s rights would be achieved without compromising the significance of motherhood. However, modern feminist scholarship has tended to deconstruct such notions as being the viable afrocentric alternatives they had been deemed, largely seeking to prove that motherhood is an essentialist marker of femininity drawn from patriarchal premises.
These debates are very present reading Maame. Just as Buchi Emecheta gave us the titular irony of the Joys of Motherhood, Vaah also passionately writes of situations in which motherhood is imposed upon and indoctrinated into women, through forced marriage, or having children when they themselves are young and unable to fully comprehend the responsibility of parenthood, for instance. But, and crucially, the author also ensures she gives us beauty in this dark tapestry by accounting for women’s liberation from systematic oppression within the story.
Maame centers on four key characters, each foregrounding a different experience of motherhood. For two characters, Ahu and Ebela, the social system dictates the course of their lives. In the African society presented in Vaah’s novel, women are expected to focus on the grooming process towards becoming wives, and mothers, and serving the interests of men. Ahu and Ebela are married off, widowed and divorced in their teens – neither has the autonomy to pursue their individual love interests.
Ebela, for example, cannot pursue her love for Mozu, the fisherman who is “about nineteen years old, tall, well built with a strong chest already on track to taking after his father” (11), because she is forced to marry Egya Amakyi, a polygamist coconut farmer, for her family’s economic gain. Ebela endures an unhappy marriage and, coupled with the loss of one of her twin babies at birth, ends up in a psychosis; moreover, this is ‘remedied’ through divorce rather than support, an example of the ways that patriarchal sanctions are imposed on women, rendering negative judgement that disregards pain and emotional trauma.
Ahu is married twice, first in a marriage just after she undergoes her puberty rites and secondly, through an enforced widow inheritance rite which, like Ebela’s first marriage, ends in a divorce. But, despite their circumstances, both Ebela and Ahu evolve into key players for change in their community, deviating from and challenging the entrenched social system of domestication – enacted through early arranged marriages and forced re-marriage, as in Ebela’s story when we learn how “Egya Amakyi had put his mouth on Ebela before she had even sprouted breasts”(44).
Further, the friendship story of Ahu and Ebela in Maame ushers in a more empowered generation of younger women asking uncomfortable questions, pursuing their ambitions and taking their own spaces of bodily autonomy. This is exemplified by the third main character, Ahu’s daughter, Bomo:
“My daughter [Bomo] would speak her mind and ask me questions. She would object if something did not make sense to her. Even at a young age she had wondered why many girls were not in school. Why were most families keeping their girls at home and only sending boys to school?… Some of these questions were beyond me. I wondered sometimes whether the gods gave Bomo to me as payback for my own nonconforming behavior. Rather than shut her down, I would tell her the truth if I did not have an answer…” (151, my emphasis).
Bomo is what I would refer to as a “post-revolution” child, the children who, like us, had parents who chose to diverge from convention in order to give us the voice to speak out, and not be confined in discomfort. However, Bomo’s story is not the usual fragrant one of a heroine defying all pre-established odds. Instead, Vaah underlines a realistic component that is not often discussed: the temptation to default back to “the ways things should be” when frustration starts to flood in.
When Bomo is in secondary school, financial woes mean the family tempt Ahu into marrying off her daughter. However, the ever-questioning, intelligent Bomo goes to university, graduating with excellent grades. And it is in this triumphant part of the story that the author paints too glossy a picture, certainly one glossier than the known reality. Bomo also falls pregnant while at university, and the mention of her considering the possibility of unsafe abortion before rejecting it, at this point and situation in her life, speaks volumes about how women’s bodily autonomy continues to be undermined, frowned upon by the gaze of a system that leaves them in an excruciating dilemma: keep their baby, or have an abortion; the only option for an autonomous decision, it seems, is for women to choose which side to be judged on.
Abortion and conception remain highly sensitive topics that stir heated debates politically and in both spirituality and philosophy. Despite presenting this and tackling the ‘elephant in the room’ of rights-based discourse, Bomo’s successes at this point in her journey, while pregnant, bely the extremity of the difficulties that reality presents to those who find themselves in a similar position. It is not that the goals she reaches are unattainable; they are, and to be strived for. But they are perhaps not as easily achieved as depicted in Bomo’s narrative arc. Even with all our decorated policies and commitments to womens’ rights, women and girls are still battling sex-based discrimination, and in work and education environments that continue to be non-inclusive. As the daughter of a nonconforming woman, Bomo’s narrative demonstrates how patriarchal structures maintain the backstop that ensures that, when pushing against the tide of expectations, the women pushing should feel like they are trying to hold together things that cannot be held, and will still fail and conform in the end. Maame tries to vividly illustrate this feeling and the strength needed to overcome it.
As an accompanying thread, the fourth of the centrally focused characters in Maame, Aso, has a story that encompasses extremes of pain and loss, and the sheer strength to build from such keen adversity. She experiences the deaths of all of her three children. Furthermore, these losses are attributed to superstition, placing the blame on her rather than the lack of proper obstetric care. Following each of her successive losses, there is woefully inadequate support for Aso; she is not granted an allowance to grieve. Instead, patriarchy’s remedy is prescribed: allow your husband to marry a second wife who will bear his children for him while you silently nurse your emotional scars. Although Aso channels her energy elsewhere and successfully runs her trades and farms, she is still overshadowed by the common stigma: that a woman is not complete or successful until she has children.
Maame demonstrates how powerful this idea is, as something the ‘modern’ world still has not erased. Aso’s story also reflects on particular intersections of traditions, and religious and spiritual institutions as flourishing bedrocks for women’s oppression. This is evident when the deaths of her children are attributed, in a cruel, repetitive cycle, to Aso’s offending others and angering the gods – including being punished by proxy of her husband’s offense in the case of her first child – by the Priestess Yaba.
Modern religious systems are not spared in their share of oppression and abuse, either. Maame illustrates the ways in which the malleability of its scriptures leaves weaknesses for its unbefitting use against others, as they are manipulated by those who use their opportunities in education to exercise their individualistic and uncompassionate regard towards others. The character of Uncle Mieza is such an example; from waiting for the Lord before permitting others to eat, to being utterly indifferent about the safety and wellbeing of his niece, Bomo, as she recognises early on:
“Uncle Mieza was hunched over his Bible. When she first arrived at Uncle Mieza’s house from Aakonu and saw Bible verses written with chalk on every doorpost in the house, she did not think much of it. Now it all seemed to fit together. Uncle Mieza’s god seemed to dictate how even mundane things like meals happened in this house” (124).
Vaah’s writing is refreshingly not complex or cryptic, making Maame a powerful and reflective piece while being an easily digestible read. However, the author can tend to overly explicate various cultural phenomena, some of which do not appear to be strictly necessary and do not tie together or feed into the larger plot, standing somewhat at odds as a result. It seems that the author, while taking care to expose downsides, does not want to be guilty of fueling negative perspectives of African cultures. The result can be a self-conscious kind of prose at times, that feels a little too wary of an external critical eye.
It can be argued that the author is implicit in the deconstruction of cultural aspects that may be harmful considering the recent currents of thought in literature that emphasize afrocentrism. Additionally, Maame seeks to redefine motherhood in a modern society utilizing socio-cultural norms from a past social context; this may be a disjunct in a society where definitions of sexuality have evolved and heteronormativity is being deconstructed. The story therefore falls silent in addressing parental debates, especially motherhood and transgender women, and homosexual couples.
Despite this, Maame demonstrates that the achievement of women’s rights continues to be incomplete, remaining socially complex and consisting of a myriad of factors deeply rooted in culture, patriarchy and religion, applicable to a number of contexts. It serves as a reminder to deal with the ever regressing debate of the right to safe abortion; as of 2017, only three African countries out of 54 have legal frameworks supporting abortion “without restriction as to reason”. Gender based violence in the world of work, especially sexual harassment, still has not been criminalised in most African countries despite the ratification of International Labour Organisation Convention no. C190, “the first international treaty to recognize the right of everyone to a world of work free from violence and harassment, including gender-based violence and harassment”.
In a post-MeToo era, and one in which sexualities and gender identities are in our spaces of public debate, Maame should have done more to reopen these very important conversations to ensure readers are reminded that they remain worth having, and that we must continue to question and interrogate them until equality is attained. Although Vaah tells us a story that is not new, Maame serves to refocus our measurements of those contentious notions of motherhood and women’s bodily autonomy in Africa.
Tikondwe Chimkowola-Kadaluka is an individual working towards ensuring the protection and social growth of women and children coupled with a passion for African Literature and Speculative Fiction.
Tikondwe works closely with CSOs and INGOs in projects centered in Child Protection Gender and Social Inclusion. She is holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature and philosophy from the University of Malawi.
Elizabeth Allua Vaah is a Ghanaian-Canadian author who writes poignant and intimate stories inspired by her childhood and growing up in a rural West-African village. She dynamically discusses womanhood and its intersections with culture and status.
Allua is a passionate advocate for girls’ education and maternal health through her family foundation – Vaah Junior Foundation.
Links to buy Vaah’s Maame are available on the book page of her website:
