Throwing Stones in Jest: Kasena Women’s “Proverbial” Revolt

• Issue: Volume 21, Number 2
• Author(s): Helen Yitah
• Article: View PDF | Download PDF
• Citation: http://journal.oraltradition.org/issues/21ii/yitah

Abstract

This study is an attempt to document and critically examine what I have called the “proverbial revolt” of Kasena women from northern Ghana, a phenomenon that constitutes, and is constituted by, a subversive and resistive use of a misogynistic oral tradition by traditional women. Kasena women take advantage of a socially sanctioned medium––the joking relationship between a Kasena woman and her husband’s siblings or kin of the same generation––to subvert and contradict Kasem proverbs and the conservative, sexualized local ideology of power therein.