Mami Wata and the Occluded Feminine in Anglophone Nigerian-Igbo Literature

This article examines the ways in which literary representations of the sacred feminine have shifted and evolved in anglophone Nigerian-Igbo literature. Beginning with an examination of the precolonial tradition of Mami Wata, or mother water, goddess worship among Igbo communities, this article traces the ways in which colonial imposition both fossilized previously flexible standards of gendered discourse and promoted largely Judeo-Christian norms for gendered behavior as part of a total political, economic, and social process of domination, which resulted in an effacement of the sacred feminine from literary representation. This effacement, however, has been redressed in recent years through a shift in engagement that has allowed the anglophone Nigerian-Igbo writer to return to the feminine as a means of voicing an alternative tradition, turning away from the colonialist problematic of earlier works. This evolution in discursive representations of gender and femininity is explored through readings of Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Nwapa's Efuru, Emecheta's The Joys of Motherhood, and Abani's GraceLand.