Women

I find it interesting that in "Luxurious Hearses" the women are portrayed in such a different way, at least by Jubril. In all of the other stories we have read, women are more sexualized. They are something to fantasize about, whereas in this story it seems to be the complete opposite. I believe this is mainly because of the religious and cultural differences. To Jubril it was so strange to see all these women on this mode of transportation. In his Muslim culture in Khamfi it was "not even permissible for a man to give his wife, daughter, or sister a ride on his bicycle," (194). Yet something so simple he was having a hard time dealing with it. In the Muslim culture it seems that the women didn't have many rights and that to sexualize them was a bad thing, they were treated more like slaves. Yet at some point I feel you could say this about the women in the other stories, I feel like its different because of the fact that this was a religion and way of life. Whereas in the other stories, it was a choice that the men made to sexualize the women. I just find it interesting to compare the way women were looked at and treated in the stories we've read so far. I also felt like I didn't know much about the Nigerian culture so I looked up information about it and learned not only about the roles that the women had but also about different cultural differences between the groups that lived in Nigeria. This brought me to a better understanding of why Jubril felt the way he did on the bus and it much more sense.

http://www.everyculture.com/Ma-Ni/Nigeria.html