The open markets of northern Nigeria are known for their bombings. This conservative Islamic region is where the militant group Boko Haram laid the groundwork for a caliphate, which included kidnapping schoolgirls and sending suicide bombers into commercial centers. (Just this week, the group dispatched bomb-laden women to a camp for women and children fleeing its violence, killing 58 people.) In 2012, when photojournalist Glenna Gordon first visited Kano, a city hit by some of the violence, she expected to encounter stories of fear and tragedy. What she didn’t expect was the love stories.

Hadiza Sani Garba writes her novels longhand in small composition books.

Kano’s markets, Gordon discovered, do a brisk commerce in local romance novels, scribbled by hand before being digitally transcribed, bulk printed, and sold for a couple of dollars each. Part of the Hausa tradition of littattafan soyayya, or love literature, the books are penned by devout Muslim women who live in walled-off compounds yet brave the Islamic censors and morality police to get their work published. With titles like Sin Is a Puppy That Follows You Home, some of the books push cultural boundaries—railing against child marriage, for instance—while others enforce them, with tips to satisfy husbands. All told, as Gordon documents in her new photo book, Diagram of the Heart, they offer a complicated glimpse of what it means to be a Muslim woman grappling with romance, religion, and loss in a chaotic region.

Love literature at the market in Kano, northern Nigeria.

Before Gordon arrived in northern Nigeria, she told me, “I was afraid of everything.” That is, until she jumped into a beat-up taxicab with one of the novelists, Rabi Talle, and her sisters—”a band of loud laughing women dressed up to the nines” for a wedding party. “What I learned,” she said, “was that there’s opportunity within constraint.” Despite cultural restrictions, the women were writing these books, posting on Facebook, and wearing bright makeup. Perhaps most radically, they were earning their own livings. Talle boldly includes contact information in her novels—her multiple cellphones ring constantly with women seeking advice.

Farida Ado, 27, is one of a small contingent of Muslim romance authors in increasingly fundamentalist northern Nigeria.

Gordon’s photos capture intimate moments: a novelist bringing sweet fruit to a lover, a woman settling a family dispute with the morality police, a young bride crying beneath her veil. “I want this to show us places that we don’t know, people that are hard for us to imagine, and women who have a degree of autonomy and professional success within a system that is hard for us to accept,” Gordon said. It’s easy to base assumptions on acts of extremism. But “there’s so much more. There’s this beautiful, fascinating world out there, where women write books and little girls read them.”

Novelist Rabi Tale with one of her suitors. She was engaged once, but the man’s family didn’t approve of her writing.

A bride-to-be prepares for her wedding. (Many of the books are about love and marriage.)

A bride at an Islamic wedding in Kano stands away from the men—male and female guests seldom mix.

A young wedding guest.

A novel rests on a bedside table.

Sani, a taxi driver, with one of his wives. His eight children are visible in the lacquered photograph.  

“If a man offers you flowers, money, or meat, always choose meat,” Tale told photojournalist Gordon.

A woman traveling by train reads a Hausa romance novel using her cellphone flashlight.

All photos by Glenna Gordon, from Diagram of the Heart (Red Hook Editions, 2016).


If you buy a book using a Bookshop link on this page, a small share of the proceeds supports our journalism.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate