Product Description

The prospects of a sixteen-year-old West African girl with no money, education, or experience might seem pretty depressing. But if she's got a hell of a lot of nerve and a knack for finding the funny side in even the worst situations, she just might triumph over her circumstances. Our heroine Hawa does, and she did. In the 1970s, John Chernoff recorded the story of her life as an "ashawo," or bar girl, making a living on gifts from men and her own quick wits, and here presents it in Hustling Is Not Stealing, one of the most remarkable "autobiographies" you will ever encounter.

What might have been a sad tale of hardship and exploitation turns instead into a fascinating send-up of life in modern Africa, thanks to Hawa's smarts, savvy, and ear for telling just the right story to make her point. Through her wide-open and knowing eyes, we get an inside view of what life is really like for young people in West Africa. We spy on nightlife scenes of sex and deception; we see how modern-minded youth deal with life in the cities in villages; and we share the sweet and sometimes silly friendships formed in the streets and bars.

But mostly we come to know Hawa and how she has navigated a life that few can even imagine. The first of two funny, poignant volumes, Hustling starts with an in-depth introduction by Chernoff to Hawa's Africa. From there the book traces her remarkable transformation from a playful warrior struggling against her circumstances to an insightful trickster enjoying and taking advantage of them as best she can.

Part coming-of-age story, part ethnography, and all compulsively readable, Hustling Is Not Stealing is a rare book that educates as thoroughly as it entertains.

"You can see some people outside, and you will think they are enjoying, but they are suffering. Every time in some nightclub, you will see a girl dressed nicely, and she's dancing, she's happy. You will say, 'Ah! This girl!' You don't know what problem she has got. Some people say that this life, it's unto us. It's unto us? Yeah, it's unto me, but sometimes it's not unto me. When I was growing up, I didn't feel like doing all these things. There is not any girl who will wake up as a young girl and say, 'As for me, when I grow up, I want to be ashawo, to go with everybody.' Not any girl will think of this."--from the book

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #478917 in Books
• Published on: 2003-12-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Chernoff, a longtime student of Ghanaian drumming and author of African Rhythm and African Sensibility, met the pseudonymous Hawa in Ghana in 1971 and started taping her stories in 1977. Born in Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) in the 1960s, three-year-old Hawa lived with various relatives after her mother died, eventually joining her father's family in Kumasi, capital of the Ashanti region of Ghana. At 16, she refused an arranged Muslim marriage and started making her own life. Moving to Accra, she became an "ashawo" woman-variously described as a hustler, bar girl or "pay-as-you-go" wife. When economic conditions deteriorated in Ghana in the early 1970s, Hawa migrated first to neighboring Togo, and then to Upper Volta, when anti-Ghanaian sentiment mounted in Togo. While emigration was a survival tactic, Hawa also viewed it as an opportunity to see how other people lived and hear their tales. Indeed, there's a restlessness that pervades Hawa's stories, whether she's describing her girlhood, her girlfriends, the men she's lived with or people who've tried to get the better of her. In Chernoff's admiring eyes, Hawa is a classic trickster, cleverly resourceful at manipulating bad situations for her own ends. Her story is a "giddy celebration of her will to dignity." Hawa and her ashawo friends are poor, but they're "not about to let their poverty spoil their life completely." Chernoff follows his lengthy and insightful introduction with hundreds of pages of transcriptions of Hawa's somewhat repetitive anecdotes as well as a glossary. A second volume, Exchange Is Not Robbery, will chronicle Hawa's travels after Togo.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From The New Yorker
While studying West African music in the early seventies, Chernoff befriended Hawa, a high-spirited, illiterate Ghanaian woman whose street-smarts and garrulousness inspired him to record a series of autobiographical interviews, which he has transcribed and edited. From the time she leaves an unhappy arranged marriage at the age of sixteen, her life unfolds as a picaresque series of exploits that illustrate her ability to live by her wits as an ashawo—a "semiprofessional" prostitute—supported by the men she meets in the bars and discos of Accra and Lomé. A resourceful heroine and loyal (if capricious) friend, Hawa is also a connoisseur of local mores, and tartly observes the daily collision of this world with that of the European men among her boyfriends. Casually weaving urban folklore into her engaging tale, Hawa displays an eye for detail and a narrative exuberance that mark her as a gifted storyteller.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

Review
Hawa displays an eye for detail and a narrative exuberance that mark her as a gifted storyteller. -- New Yorker, February 9, 2004

Customer Reviews

A Unique View from Inside
John M. Chernoff's Hustling is Not Stealing is a unique and highly enjoyable insight into a woman who too often would be viewed in stereotypes or lost in statistics about the hand-to-mouth existence of people in what used to be called the Third World. Chernoff focuses upon the life of one woman, Hawa, describing her as small, cute, and a gifted storyteller. She becomes vividly real as she tells her tales of life as a bar girl, doing what she needs to do to survive -- and with great humor and style! Chernoff begins with a comprehensive and fascinating introduction, which places Hawa's experience in the broad context of African realities, also explaining his own years in Africa as a student of ethnomusicology and of the social milieu in which Hawa's adventures take place. The reader is drawn in, sometimes laughing, sometimes appalled, often both at the same time. Hawa is often hassled by poverty or by those seeking to exploit her. But she laughs her irresistible laugh -- hee hee hee -- and gets her own back. She is no victim! As she travels through Ghana, Togo, and Burkina Faso, one gets a sense of excitement and fun, despite the hard times and dangers. Hawa comes off as a very admirable woman, and Chernoff's book is a real pleasure. His valuable scholarship is matched by his humanity. As you peek into Hawa's world, she comes vividly and unforgettably to life and becomes a friend. This book is priceless! I loved it!

Hustling is Not Stealing
Read this book in two days. Couldn't put it down. The main character lives in a culture with few options for women. While the choices she makes may be appalling to the typical American, and while her profane language may at first cause dismay, once you get to know her, her intelligence, a certain grace, sense of fairness, sense of irony, strength and courage make you love her in spite of her chosen life. All the while you are intrigued and trying to understand her, she is slying educating you on the realities of current West Africa in a way that a textbook never could. Excellent book. Don't miss it.

A Phenomenal Book
Its hard to describe what I love most about this book... the glimpse into a often-ignored slice of a misunderstood culture on a forgotten continent... the fierce strength of Hawa, the woman who tells the stories... her humor, her joy, her wisdom. In the end though, what kept me turning the pages was the sheer inventiveness and mastery of language. The transcription faithfully captures the amazing things that can happen when english escapes its shackles: this woman, who speaks 10 languages, mixing their vocabulary and construction together, is a masterful communicator and a mesmerizing storyteller. The book is extensively footnoted for explication, but I found Hawa's constructions simultaneously unique and obvious in the best way, and unfailingly charming.

One piece of advice: Read the stories first and the introduction last. Although it ultimately adds a lot of interesting and useful background, the first third of Chernoff's intro is so riddled with opaque anthropological jargon as to provide an unintentionally hilarious-- in a sort of Pale Fire-esque way-- counterweight to Hawa's graceful, lively and quicksilver stories of living "the life".

Buy this book-- read this book-- tell your friends about this book.