Language, Power, and Identity in Hausa Feminist Writing: Toward a Hausa Feminist Literary Criticism

The emergence of women's voices in Hausa creative writing since the 1990s represents a significant development in Hausa literary history, yet theoretical frameworks for reading and evaluating this body of work from a feminist perspective remain underdeveloped relative to the richness of the texts themselves. This doctoral study develops an original Hausa feminist literary criticism, theorising the intersections of language, power, and identity in women's Hausa writing and providing a framework applicable to analysis of feminist dimensions in Hausa creative production. Grounded in African feminist theory, postcolonial feminist literary criticism, and Islamic feminist thought, the research develops a theoretical synthesis that accounts for the specific cultural and religious context of Hausa women's writing, distinguishing this context from both Western feminist frameworks and pan-African feminist approaches that may not adequately engage with Islamic discursive traditions. The empirical component involves close reading and critical analysis of 30 creative works by Hausa women writers including novels, poetry collections, and short story anthologies published between 2018 and 2024, in-depth interviews with 25 female Hausa writers on their creative orientations and experiences of the literary field, and a sociological analysis of the conditions of women's literary production in Kano's publishing environment. Original theoretical contributions include a Hausa Feminist Literary Criticism Framework with five analytical principles grounded in Islamic feminist epistemology, Hausa cultural specificity, and postcolonial awareness of colonial legacies in literary production. The framework is demonstrated through extended critical readings of representative texts. Keywords: Hausa feminist writing, Literary criticism, Women's literature, Identity, Language and power.