Arts Review: 'Kano Market Literature'
A Voice of Liberation For Women in Nigeria's Muslim Conservative, Polygamous North
By EDWARD HARRIS
Associated Press Writer
Published, July 31, 2008
KANO, Nigeria (AP) - Each evening, headscarf-shrouded women
seeking romantic advice gather at book stalls lining a rush-hour
intersection in Nigeria's Islamic heartland.
With the sun setting red behind a nearby mosque, the women thumb
through northern Nigeria's unique, female-authored literary
offerings: cheaply bound but popular volumes that address issues
confronting women in a Shariah society: courtship, polygamy and the
meaning of love.
While hardly bodice-rippers by Western standards, the
controversy surrounding what academics call "Kano market
literature" is increasing with the books' readership. Conservative
scholars and clerics in Nigeria's north deride the tomes as pulp
fiction that degrades Islamic and indigenous cultural mores. A top
Islamic leader recently set fire to a pile of the books.
But female readers say the volumes -- with such titles as "Edge
of Fate," "False Love" and "Undeceiveful Heart" -- help them
navigate contemporary life and their titles are proliferating
rapidly, pitting younger women against a predominantly male,
conservative elite.
"Women are not only writing for pleasure, no, we are writing
because we are seeing what is happening in the society and we want
a lot of corrections," says Binta Rabiu Spikin, a 32-year-old
single woman who was raised in her grandfather's home, which
included four wives.
"We want amendments made. That's why we write."
The books are mostly written in the local language of Hausa.
They extoll the values of true love based on feelings, rather than
family or other social pressures. Some also carry anti-drug
messages.
Several volumes instruct women on how to send loving text
messages to their intended mate's mobile phones: "Knowing I can
love U with the distance between our hearts makes my love 4U
stronger."
Still, readers hoping for Kama Sutra-like instruction in
male-female relations will be disappointed. The story lines in most
of the novels highlight issues facing women and girls, particularly
their relations with men.
Many men in northern Nigeria have up to four wives, in keeping
with Islamic injunctions, frequently forcing women who may not be
natural allies to live together in close quarters. Multiple wives
is far less common in Nigeria's predominantly Christian south.
The books don't normally offer instructions on how to deal with
this family set up, but instead offer a picture of the household
dynamics, so that women will know what to expect.
Other volumes take on a dreamier approach, with women openly
flirting and dancing closely with men in public. In reality, that's
a rarity in northern Nigeria, where public modesty and chastity are
encouraged in women. Readers say the books help them understand
female adult life.
"Now we're living in a modern society, but there are still
things they don't tell you," says Maryam Muhammed Haladu, a
20-year old devotee of the books. "Some ladies, when they're
married, they don't know what to do. They don't know how to take
care of a man, how to seduce him."
But even the depiction of men and women together rankle some
conservatives. Throughout the ages, cultural mores were transmitted
by village leaders and through families in an oral tradition.
Arab slave and spice traders brought Islam to the Hausa people
in 1300s. Later, English colonialists who ruled Nigeria until its
1960 independence applied the English alphabet to the Hausa
language, allowing for a written history. The British encouraged
Hausa writing with competitions in the 1930s.
Over the decades, Hausa speakers developed a thriving literary
tradition in their own language, which is rare in Africa, where
many languages had no written tradition until colonialists brought
script.
But until computers and cheaper means of publishing arrived in
the late 1990s, when Shariah or Islamic law was installed in the
area, male cultural elites controlled the presses.
With the recent explosion of communication technology, women
have found ways to publish their books, too. About 100 of the Kano
chapter of the Nigerian Writers Association are now female, a
massive increase since the turn of the century when military rule
ended and mobile phone and other technology blossomed in Nigeria.
The women writers' books, along with similarly themed novels by
men, now crowd jerry-rigged roadside bookshops across Kano. At
about 30 cents a copy, writers say sales are way up in the past few
years.
The colorfully titled books, which are little more than stapled
pamphlets, normally boast covers with women smiling at passers-by.
Between the covers, women discuss how to approach men while
remaining chaste, and how to live peacefully in a household with
the four wives allowed by Islam.
But many academics and Islamic clerics wish the books would just
disappear. They say foreign influences are creeping into the
writings, particularly from the popular Indian Bollywood movies,
undermining traditional Hausa and Islamic practices.
They also complain that the writing is of a low level, which
tarnishes their long literary traditions. The region's traditional
leader, the Emir of Kano, recently presided over a ceremony where
several of the books that were found inside school houses were
torched.
"Women, particularly the youth, like love and they want to talk
about it. But among us Hausas, we do love inside the home, not
outside," says Sheikh Ibrahim Khalil, the head of Kano's Islamic
clerics' association, the Council of Ulama.
"Religiously, it's not haram (banned) to write about love in
Islam. But they way they write, it's not very mature," he said.
"It's a problem for our education, our culture, our morality."
For many others, the books herald broader shifts, while also
encouraging literacy among women in a region with low levels of
female education.
"I do think (the books) have some prophetic qualities, in terms
of where Islamic and Hausa culture is headed," says Novian
Whitsitt, an associate professor at Africana studies at Luther
College in Iowa, who has studied the phenomenon.
"It speaks to younger generations' desire to make for a more
liberating environment with regard to women's expression and
contributions to society."
While some books have had publishing runs of over 100,000, the
writers say authorship doesn't pay a living wage, but they find
importance in communicating with a mass audience.
AP-CS-05-01-08 2026EDT
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