Baba of Karo: A Woman of the Muslim Hausa

I read this book 20 years ago and haven't been able to get it out of my head. Back then, I checked it out from the University library. Now I finally have my own copy. This book changed my life. What a seminal work.

Baba of Karo, a Woman of the Muslim Hausa, first published in 1945, is the fascinating autobiography of Baba, a very elderly Hausa woman. Baba talks about Hausa domestic life, slavery, farming and explains Hausa rituals. Her memories reach all the way back to the days of intertribal warfare and slave raids, providing an invaluable history of Hausa life in the late 1800s through the first half of the twentieth century.Although Baba of Karo remains a valuable classic in the field of African studies I think that it would be equally valuable in the area of women's studies. Anyone who is interested in women's history will find this an especially fascinating and informative book. At a time when no outside male would ever have been allowed access to interview a female, Mary Smith learned Hausa and spent uncountable daily sessions with Baba as the old women told her life's story of living in a polygynous marriage in the Hausa male-oriented society from a woman's point of view.