Habiba

Description

Saleh’s love and respect for his mother, Hamsatu, is not only detrimental to his own life but also injurious to his family life. Hamsatu makes all the decisions in his life. She becomes despotic and decides who her son, Saleh, should marry, and the type of children his wife should bear. Habiba is just thirteen when her grandmother, Hamsatu brings in a suitor, Zubairu, a contemporary of her late husband. Although Saleh wishes to send all his children to school, a rainstorm renders him hopeless as his mother takes ill and eventually dies. Following his mother’s death, Saleh’s bankruptcy compels him to take a loan from the elderly Zubairu and his failure to repay the loan compels him to hand over his daughter, Habiba, in marriage to Zubairu. Consequently, Habiba is helpless and soon discovers that she must pay not just for her father’s wrongs but must also shoulder the responsibility of his abandoned wife and children by remaining married to Zubairu who is willing to assist them as long as she plays his game. Habiba desires to punish both her father and Zubairu for ruining her dreams. What will she have to do to get at them?

Praise for Habiba

 “Habiba is a captivating tale of a young protagonist by the name of the title of the book growing up in north-eastern Nigeria. In this craftly engrossing Hausa novel in the English language, Razinat T. Mohammed uses her mastery of storytelling to produce a vernacular hermeneutics of class-based violence experienced by underprivileged teenage Muslim girls such as the protagonist of her novel, Habiba, in predominantly Hausa speaking north-eastern Nigeria, a region neglected by the postcolonial state and controlled by a despotic regional oligarchic patriarchal elite. Habiba is an ethical feminist must-read for all committed to social justice and the quest to end sexual exploitation and gender-based violence against teenage girls in society.”

Ousseina D. Alidou, Professor of African Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature at Rutgers University and author of Engaging Modernity: Muslim Women and The Politics of Agency in Postcolonial Niger.

“Powerfully realist in its aesthetic choice and yet subtle in its message, Habiba creates for readers the space to indulge as well as to wonder within and outside of what rebellious possibilities are made available through love.”

Naminata Diabate, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Cornell University and author of Naked Agency: Genital Cursing and Biopolitics in Africa.