A Portrait of Acculturation in Postcolonial Writings: An Analysis of Aliyu Kamal’s Silence and a Smile

Abstract

From time immemorial, literary writers via the three arms of literature have examined (and are still examining) the extent to which certain phenomena have permeated a social setting and their detrimental consequences on the corporate existence of the society or nation. Aliyu Kamal is one of such writers who discusses the religious aspirations and cultural values of the Hausa Muslim society of the northern Nigerian region in most of his works and how they have been affected by the onslaught of modernization. This paper examines the portrayal of the after-effects of foreign culture in a postcolonial Nigerian society, as treated in Kamal’s Silence and a Smile (2005). He presents a society that faces an identity crisis in the process of cultural transformation emanating from intercultural contact. By the application of postcolonial theory as the theoretical framework, the paper pinpoints how the author, through the portraiture of some of his characters, depicts the influence of acculturation on northern Nigerian youth emphatically in terms of attire and the rejection of some cultural marital rites like giving toshi (gift of money) to a lady one courts and bringing lefe (trousseau) to the bribe’s house before the marriage. The findings established the impact of acculturation as a major inclination and trend that portrays social reality to the detriment established traditional practices.