Adama Drabo's comic tale about a revolution in which women's and men's roles are reversed makes some serious points about the status of women in Africa today. Set among the eighteenth-century Dogon, Taafe Fanga was inspired in part by the actual role women played in Mali's 1991 revolution, and in part by Dogon mythology, where it is believed that social life must reflect the order of the universe, and vice versa. Yayémé, whose husband beats her, encounters what she takes to be a bush spirit and makes off with its powerful mask, which she uses to terrorize the men into exchanging roles with the women. Drabo exploits the full comedic possibilities of this "triumph of the skirts." But the women soon recognize that their purpose was not simply to perpetuate gender stereotypes and injustice in reverse or to imbalance the world in the opposite direction.