Undocumented Textiles: Material Expressions of Indian Ocean Identities in Literature

Abstract

In this article, I explore the way that a work song called “Hooyaalaadee” reveals the importance of women’s textile labor to the Banaadiri people, the Somali nation and the wider Indian Ocean textile industry. Although written historiography has not adequately documented southern Somalia’s rich textile industry, the Banaadiri woman facilitates a multitude of narratives about this important textile trade through performing this oral work song. “Hooyaalaadee” shows the way that an oral poem can be an alternative means through which to preserve and archive the histories of textile production within the Banaadiri community. I argue that in “Hooyaalaadee,” the Banaadiri woman’s role as the spinner of cotton in the manufacture of the Futa Benaadir, a cloth spun and woven by the Banaadiri community as well as the weaver of hats, mats and baskets, is generative of strong kinship networks. The Banaadiri women create the threads to not only bind the Banaadiri community together as a unit but also to connect the Banaadiri people with the Somali nation and the wider Indian Ocean world. I read Amitav Ghosh’s 1986 novel The Circle of Reason to bring into relief many of the ideas around regionally-specific identity, community and culture which emerge from “Hooyaalaadee”.

Keywords:

• Indian Ocean textiles
• the Futa Benaadir
• Banaadiri women’s textile labor
• storytelling
• cultural co-production through cloth

Additional information

Funding

This article stems from her doctorate thesis which was funded by the SWW DTP and Funds for Women Graduates.

Notes on contributors

Ayan Salaad

Ayan Salaad is a researcher in the fields of Indian Ocean, African, and Translation Studies. She holds a BA in English Literature from Queen Mary, University of London and an MA in African Studies from SOAS, University of London. She completed a SWW DTP funded PhD at Southampton University which compared expressive culture in Banaadiri oral poetry with globally circulating Indian Ocean texts. She is particularly interested in the intersections between orality and literacy, theories around material culture and writings about Islands, Oceans and coasts. In her doctorate, she explored the way that Banaadiri oral poetry and Indian Ocean texts present local and Indian Ocean identities as mutually co-constitutive through different forms of material culture: textiles, cloth, gold jewellery etc. She has a chapter forthcoming in a Routledge edited volume entitled “Women and Water in Global Fiction: Feminisms and Gender.” [email protected]