Gender, narrative space, and modern Hausa literature.

This essay seeks to demonstrate the interplay between gender and (oral and written) narrative spaces, and the relationship between those spaces and the shifting roles of men and women in the production of literatures in Hausa culture. The term Hausa is used to refer broadly to a putatively multi-ethnic and predominantly Muslim community of speakers of Hausa as a native language. Over the centuries the neighboring peoples from various ethnic backgrounds (e.g., some Fulani, Kanuri, and Nupe) have adopted Hausa identity simply by virtue of linguistic assimilation. The discussion here will be placed in historical space--from the indigenous oral heritage, through the Islamic and Jihadist phase, to the more modern period of the Western impact. This historical course reveals how a conjuncture of different kinds of forces has impacted differently on men and women as producers of verbal arts (literature). These gender-based divergences, however, have not obliterated the fact of their interdependency. At the same time, to the extent that the gender factor is related, to some degree or other, to the dichotomy between orality and literacy, it has naturally featured in the discourse on tradition and modernity. And it is to this interplay between tradition and modernity, on the one hand, and orality and literacy, on the other, that we must first turn.

The view adopted here is that tradition and modernity are coexisting modes/ways of (re)inventing and (re)interpreting culture within a given space. As such they must not be dichotomized as referential corollaries to precolonial and postcolonial, respectively. In this regard, I am embracing Kwame Gyekye's argument:

 
   The concept of modernity may give the impression that modernity represents 
   a break with tradition and is thus irreconcilable with it; such an 
   impression would clearly be false. For one thing, every society in the 
   modern world has many traditional elements inherited and accepted from 
   previous, that is "premodern", generations; for another, if in modern times 
   we can talk sensibly about "our tradition of so-and-so", then traditions 
   are not irreconcilable with modernity. Thus, the modernity of tradition 
   would be an intelligible concept, just as the tradition of modernity--in as 
   much as that modern culture itself has become a tradition. (271) 

The situation on the ground, then, is one in which orality--a legacy of tradition--and writing--a legacy of the "modern" in many parts of Africa--are co-existing traditions. Furthermore, as much as written literature has drawn from the heritage of orality, the oral itself is dynamic and continues to reinvent and inscribe itself into the space (s) of the modern. The oral heritage, for example, was appropriated, reshaped, and used effectively as part of the anti-apartheid literature of combat in South Africa. Gcina Mhlope, for example, had the following to say about his adoption of story-telling from the oral heritage:

 
   When I decided to concentrate more on storytelling full time, I found that 
   I could draw many different kinds of people who would not necessarily come 
   if they thought I was telling strictly political stories. All these people 
   came and enjoyed the stories of long ago and found their own meanings. Many 
   told me how surprised they were at seeing the South Africa of the day in 
   the stories. They also saw very vividly the similarities in character of 
   some of the people around them. (112) 

This is an artistic legacy that Mhlope attributes directly to the influence and inspiration of his own grandmother:

 
   I was born in [...] Hammarsdaleon the East Coast of South. I was brought up 
   by my paternal grandmother and she was a great storyteller--her expressive 
   face, her eyes, her voice, even the way she used her hands--these images 
   are still very vivid in my mind. She deserves the praise for creating the 
   storyteller I am today. (109)