Hamida’s Radical Refusal: Enslaved Girlhood and Concubinage in Colonial Zanzibar

Elisabeth McMahon ()
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Elisabeth McMahon: Tulane University

Chapter Chapter 5 in African Feminist Girlhood Studies and Development, 2025, pp 85-106 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Hamida, an enslaved girl living on Pemba Island in 1897, walked into the colonial record and then disappeared. She went to the Wali court and challenged the right of her female owner’s brother (Masoud) to claim her as a concubine. Using what Saidiya Hartman calls “radical refusal,” Hamida refused to accept the social norms that placed her at the sexual service of her owner’s brother. In her effort to distinguish between her subjection by Masoud and the possibilities of her future desire, Hamida created visibility for herself in a colonial space that refused to recognize the rights of females, children, and the enslaved. By exploring Hamida’s quotidian existence, this chapter examines desire, sexuality, and girlhood in the Zanzibar Islands.

Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:gdechp:978-3-031-91561-1_5

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-91561-1_5

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