A “Cinderella” Tale in the Hausa Muslim Women's Imagination

Abstract

AN IMPORTANT ATTRIBUTE of Hausa oral literature, as of Afro-Islamic and other African oral literatures in general, is improvisation. tale exists only when it is narrated/performed, and with virtually every new narration it assumes a new life in response to the artist's interpretation of the new situation -time, location, setting, mood, and material conditions-within which it is contextualized. This essay looks at how Islam has impacted a recent narration of The Story of the Orphan who Marries the Prince of Masar-a wicked stepmother tale akin to the one popularly known as Cinderella in the West. This takes place at a time of increasing Islamic resurgence and a growing participation of women in redefining Islam in the Hausa culture of West Africa. Elsewhere I have argued that in general Hausa women's voices have been marginalized as a result of both the local culture and colonial patriarchy. Of course, a tiny minority of women of upper and middle class households did manage to contribute to the public sphere, especially in the field of Islamic knowledge and literary production (Alidou, forthcoming). cultural and political activism and literary works of the daughters of Sheikh Usman Dan Fodio, the Islamic founder and leader of Sokoto Caliphate, for example, of which Nana Asma'u's legacy remains one of the most remarkable, are already well documented (see Boyd; Boyd and Mack; and Mack and Boyd). In general, however, traditional (Islamic) colonial and postcolonial educational structures combined to disempower women. In this process, Islamic knowledge-still primarily under the control of men-was continuously deployed to construct an ideology that justified the silencing of women, especially in the public sphere. However, the wind of democratization that swept the continent in the 1990s, calling for pluralistic rights of social constituents-for example, Christians and ethnic minorities-in the Niger republic, created room for women to seek Islamic knowledge on their own terms (even if still within patriarchal space) as a means of reaching a new understanding of women's rights within Islam and Islamic societies. Ever since, women have seized the political space of liberalization to assert their own knowledge of Islam, to contribute to the socio-cultural and political reshaping of the nation, and to engage in the discourse of defining a Nigerien Muslim identity by providing a woman's perspective (Alidou, Women and the