Motherhood in Context: An Analysis of Edwidge Dancticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory

Women’s writings from the Caribbean have gained immense interest in recent years due to the feminist movement which swept across the globe in the last few decades. Within the feminist framework, arose the black feminist strand to address specific experiences and contexts of women in the black world, popularly known as Black feminism. Initially dismissed as the ‘political’ wing of the movement, black feminism has come to influence how literary discourse is consumed. Literary attention has gradually shifted from looking at how history, economic environment and patriarchy affect women characters, to the study of mother characters in order to understand how their experiences intersect with the contexts they find themselves in. However, there has been little focus on black motherhood especially when dealing with specific contexts, feelings of characters, attitudes and even personal ambitions. This study therefore sought to fill this gap by examining the multiplicity of factors affecting motherhood from a black people’s perspective in Edwidge Dancticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory in order to reveal what shapes the experience of motherhood in a black people’s context. Concepts of Black feminism as advanced by Kimberle Crenshaw formed a backdrop to analyze literary representation of black motherhood in the text. From the analysis, the study established that black mothers go through physical and emotional pain in their struggle to create a good life for their children and that mother figures referred to as ‘othermothers’ in the text, assume the important roles of mothers and are also subjects of patriarchy. The study concludes that black mothers resist these oppressive societal structures in their quest for personal identity which allows them to survive in such inconducive and unfriendly environments shaped by patriarchal tendencies.

Mother, Black Motherhood, Black Feminism, Context

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