Balaraba Ramat Yakubu is a modern feminist writer who is fiercely driven by her own experience. At the age of 13, Yakubu was forced to abandon her education in favor of getting married. After only about a year of marriage, her husband sent her back to her father’s home. After this divorce, her father allowed her to enroll in sewing classes, but she was actually learning to read and write in Hausa. She continued her education, and achieved an elementary education before her second marriage, during which she had her first child. This marriage too did not last. Now, however, her father was no longer opposed to her getting an education, and Yakubu has gone on to become one of the most popular Hausa-language authors of fiction in Nigeria. In 2012, Yakubu became the first female Hausa writer to be translated into English (Zeijl). She is an author of “Littattafan Soyayya”, or books of love, and these books have become a popular and crucial way for authors to examine bigger problems of their society, such as the inequality of polygamy or female education (“Afrikult on Balaraba Ramat Yakubu”).
Stemming from her own experiences, Yakubu in her book Sin Is a Puppy That Follows You Home comments on the inherent inequality that permeates polygamist marriages. She uses everyday tales that many women can connect with, but addresses issues such as domestic violence within those stories, and weaves them together into a dual plot story.
Rabi, the main character, is the mother of nine children and sole wife to her husband Alhaji Abdu. Her husband is neglectful, leaving her the responsibility of having to work to support her children, something most wives should not have to do. Alhaji Abdu decides to take another wife, a woman named Delu, which leads to Rabi being thrown out of the house completely, along with all of their children. Despite this, she is able to work, clothe and feed her children, and even send one of her sons off to school. Later, Alhaji Abdu come crawling back to Rabi. The shop that he used to make his livelihood goes up in flames in a freak market fire, leaving him with nothing. Delu decides to leave him because of this. and so he begs Rabi to come back to him. Only after being badgered by the men in her family for days on end does she go back. Though she returns to her husband, there is a shift in their relationship. The power has now shifted to Rabi’s capable hands, as she is now the one to control the family finances.
The second plot focuses on Saudatu, Rabi’s eldest daughter; who is described as patient, resilient, and devoted to her religion (Yakubu 11). Something that is noteworthy, is that she is highly educated, and marriage is not something that is forced upon Saudatu (George, 5). A young man, Alhaji Abubakar, falls madly in love with her and marries her, despite the fact that he already has two wives (George, 6). Alhaji Abubakar spoils Saudatu with gifts, and supports her family when they fall on hard times. But, Alhaji Abubakar turns out to be violent and throws his other two wives out of the house in favor of Saudatu. He also forces Saudatu to work far more than she should have to, being forced to take care of children mere days after giving birth herself (McCain lecture).
Despite all of the loose ends being tied up by the end of her novel, Yakubu still leaves us with a sense of unease. We are not necessarily happy with how Saudatu’s story ended with the rich and romantic but violent and controlling Alhaji Abubakar. We are certainly not happy with Rabi having to reconcile with Alhaji Abdu. It seems to me that this is Yakubu’s point. Though all the women end in semi-stable marriages, it stands that this is the best any of them could achieve within their patriarchal society. Both Rabi and Saudatu must exist in marriages that may not be positive, and we do not know that they will be happy in the future, given what we have seen from their husbands previously.
Throughout her novel, Yakubu shows examples of women who endure within their culture. Despite the unhappiness that her characters have to endure, Yakubu shows us subversively strong women. Rabi is able to survive and support her family. Saudatu is able to gain safety through her good character. Even Delu, despite being labeled as a prostitute, she seems confident in herself and is actually able to have power over the men in her life. Yakubu presents different options through which the three women gained power. In being divorced, Rabi gained an independence and freedom that she had not had before, and even after returning to Alhaji Abdu she retained some of that power and control over her life. Saudatu was able to finish her education and was rewarded with the safety of a rich husband who loves her. Even Delu finds power in being a prostitute. She no longer lets her life be dictated by society’s expectations of her. By the end of the story, we see how Yakubu has taken tales that would be familiar to those in her culture and turned them on its head.
Yakubu also makes her opinion on marriage apparent. The ideal marriage, in Sin Is a Puppy That Follows You Home, consists of one man and one woman. In the case of Saudatu, she enters the home of her husband as a third wife, but they end in a single-couple household. With Rabi, even despite all of the turmoil surrounding the family, Rabi and Alhaji Abdu end their tale as the only couple in their house. In her novel, Yakubu alluded to the fact that, though it is acceptable for men to take multiple wives, no man could hope to treat all wives with perfect equality, and that this equality is key.
Her novels are able to “become larger exposes, which enable the community outside the novel to learn from what is happening in society”.
– Carmen McCain, The Politics of Exposure
Through the women that she writes about, Yakubu provides us with strong women that operate within their society, and shows us how they go about gaining power and control over their lives through their different situations. They all succeed as best they can in their male dominated society, but in this novel Yakubu gives us hope of change that could come from the reevaluation of some of these patriarchal practices.
Sources:
“Afrikult on Balaraba Ramat Yakubu.” Afrikult, For Book’s Sake, 11 Aug. 2015, forbookssake.net/2015/08/11/afrikult-on-balaraba-ramat-yakubu/.
George, Caroline. “African Feminism and the Contemporary Hausa Novel: A Study of Balaraba Ramat Yakubu’s ‘Sin Is a Puppy That Follows You Home’” Academia.edu – Share Research, n.d. Web. 1 Dec. 2017.
McCain, Carmen. “The Politics of Exposure: Contested Cosmopolitanisms, Revelation of Secrets,and Intermedial Reflexivity in Hausa Popular Expression”. Diss. U of Wisconsin-Madison, 2014. Web. 1 December 2017.
Yakubu, Balaraba Ramat. Sin Is a Puppy That Follows You Home. Translated by Aliyu Kamal, Blaft Publ., 2012.
Zeijl, Femke van. “From Illiterate Child Bride to Famous Nigerian Novelist.” Aljazeera, Al Jazeera Media Network, 7 Mar. 2016.
Images:
Yakubu, Balaraba Ramat. “Sin Is a Puppy That Follows You Home.” Amazon, http://www.amazon.com/Sin-Puppy-That-Follows-Home-ebook/dp/B009TKJKQC.
Brown, Nancy. “Nigerian Novelist Balaraba Ramat Yakubu.” Worldreader, 22 Sept. 2016, http://www.worldreader.org/blog/nigerian-novelist-balaraba-ramat-yakubu-now-on-worldreader-mobile/.
Beyond the Single Story 