Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Conservative scholars and clerics in Nigeria’s north deride the tomes as pulp fiction that degrades Islamic and indigenous cultural mores. A top Islamic leaders recently set fire to a pile of the books.

But female readers say the volumes — with such titles as “Edge of Fate,” “False Love” and “Undeceiveful Heart” — help them navigate contemporary life and their titles are proliferating rapidly, pitting younger women against a predominantly male, conservative elite.

Critics in Nigeria dismiss them as poorly written negative influences that threaten to pollute the sanctity of their culture, their language, and their society. These books are also attracting the attention of academic scholars in the past few years as a new example of feminist literature, and Novian Whitsitt’s article from June 2002 details the objections raised:

Public opinion harshly criticizes the literature for allegedly corrupting the minds of the youth, especially young women. Much of the response is based on hearsay, as most people have only familiarized themselves with the literature through word of mouth. Common belief holds that most books are read by female youth in secondary schools and that the vast majority of the works have prompted moral decay. Critics contend the romantic stories promote sexual promiscuity and the encouragement of youthful disobedience of parental desires in conjugal affairs.

My, oh, my. That doesn’t sound familiar at ALL, does it?

In [the writers’] estimation, [the] novels possess the dual attributes of entertainment and instruction. Readers can experience an array of pleasurable fantasies while remaining conscious of the fact that the romantic trope of stories is a vehicle for the social concerns of writers. Books become thematic commentaries on the place of auren dole (forced marriage), auren mata biyu (polygamy), purdah (female seclusion), and ilimin mata (women’s education) in contemporary Hausa society.

The Yahoo!News article also examines the possible advances brought about by these books, “known to Hausa speakers as Littattafan Soyayya (books of love):”

For many others, the books herald broader shifts, while also encouraging literacy among women in a region with low levels of female education. “I do think (the books) have some prophetic qualities, in terms of where Islamic and Hausa culture is headed,” says Novian Whitsitt, an associate professor at Africana studies at Luther College in Iowa, who has studied the phenomenon.

“It speaks to younger generations’ desire to make for a more liberating environment with regard to women’s expression and contributions to society.”

While some books have had publishing runs of over 100,000, the writers say authorship doesn’t pay a living wage, but they find importance in communicating with a mass audience.

So, the next time someone disses the genre, you can bring up this bit of information, along with the Cook sisters to refute them. Pass me a romance, please. 

Take us for example. We’re an LLC, so we’re a small business. One particular small press has asked to buy two advertisement spaces from us, and asked that we design those ads. I’ve done so, both times, and received neither confirmation that the proof was accepted, nor response as to when they would like the ad to run. My requests for payment were left unanswered, and my email requesting a response, any response, hello...Bueller? Bueller? have gained me nothing except time wasted and fees lost.

Since it was small potatoes in more than one sense, my elected option was and is to not do business with them from this point forward. But should I announce to all and sundry (sundry, for the record, is such a tart) that this press seems to have screwed me over? Maybe it’s a miscommunication, or maybe the URL in my email landed me in the SPAM filter, or maybe they took the ad that I designed and used it elsewhere. How the crap do I know? I don’t. So I sit and wonder.

So where does professional behavior begin and end? Is it professional of me to gripe about this press by name and say “authors beware!” since I think my experience speaks volumes as to the professional behavior of this press? Many writers will probably comment and say, “YES WE NEED TO KNOW! Our livelihoods depend on accurate information in a rumor-laden industry!”

And others will say, “That’s your business and it reflects poorly on you to make it public in this manner.”

Every time certain presses are discussed online, and it happens often with a few of them, authors email me and confirm the rumors being reported, revealing their own problems while begging that I not reveal their names, as they fear retribution from those publishers that would damage their careers. And then, on the flip side, there’s author behavior that is so breathtakingly bizarre, and not in a good way, that one wonders if anyone in the publishing end of things notices, if it has any career-based effect in the long term, or if it even should. Somewhere in the middle there are authors who speak out on their blogs about how upset they are regarding some publishing decisions. Sometimes that plays out to their benefit; sometimes it makes them look like they regularly aim firearms at their own toes.

How does one criticize one’s publisher and do so in a professional manner? Is that even possible? And on the flip side, is it ever ok to say, “Holy shit, your behavior as an author makes us look bad, and I so wish you’d shut the hell up?” Where is that line?