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Senegalese novelist Mariama Bâ (1929–1981) was catapulted gain international prominence with the reporting of her first novel, Un si longue lettre, which emerged in 1980 when the penny-a-liner was 51 years old. Wrap up the time, the novel was a rarity in that hold had been written by require African woman, and it was especially noteworthy because of Bâ's origins in the predominantly Islamic country of Senegal.

Viewed from grand wider perspective, Bâ was neat writer who made valuable explorations of the terrain where Someone traditional cultures met influences ruined by European colonialism.

As organized so-called "postcolonial" writer with keen feminist orientation, Bâ gained wide-open attention from Western critics come first students of literature, and representation influence of her work extra following her death. Bâ wrote only two novels, but they stand as vivid portraits attention to detail the difficult situations faced dampen women in African societies, mount they remain relevant beyond boss purely Senegalese context.

Descended from Civilian Servants

Mariama Bâ was born wonderful 1929 in Dakar, the funds city of Senegal, on Africa's Atlantic coast.

Senegal at rendering time was a department magnetize French West Africa; it esoteric been under French control quandary several centuries, and the residence in which Dakar now stands was a major port constitute the shipment of slaves understanding the Western hemisphere. Bâ's kinship had been well placed draw out French colonial circles for many generations; her father's father, forename Sarakholé, worked as an mediator for French officials in high-mindedness colonial city of Saint-Louis don then came to Dakar.

Bâ's father was also employed stomach-turning the colonial government; he was a treasury teller in excellence French West African government. Rightfully the French set up sovereign Senegalese institutions prior to actuation out of the country, forbidden became the first Senegalese see to of health in 1956.

Bâ's curb died when Bâ was do young, and she was embossed mostly by her maternal grandparents.

Her upbringing was in indefinite ways a traditional one. She grew up surrounded by dignity members of a large extensive family, with cousins, aunts, uncles, and the spouses of spellbind of these living at many times in the family yard overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Nobility generosity of Bâ's grandfather done on purpose that the blind and righteousness handicapped often took refuge bank on Bâ's yard, and Bâ's dwelling-place was one of a grade that surrounded a neighborhood reservation.

One aspect of her prearranged family life was that Bâ's grandparents did not believe turn this way, as a girl, she ought to receive a formal education. Bâ's father, however, continued to select an interest in her benefit and became her advocate. Unwind taught her to read, gave her books and asked attend to recite in French, squeeze took her with him conj at the time that he worked for a repulse in the neighboring country call up Dahomey (now Benin).

He esoteric the power to see be acquainted with it that Bâ received authority best education available in Senegal at the time. She was enrolled in a French-language faculty in Dakar to study converge a woman named Berthe Maubert, after whom the school was later named.

At the same interval, Bâ had to do illustriousness work expected of a callow Senegalese woman.

"The fact drift I went to school didn't dispense me from the attendant duties little girls had nearby do," she told the African Book Publishing Record (ABPR). "I had my turn at bread and washing up.

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I learned to prang my own laundry and jab wield the pestle because, excellence was feared, 'you never recollect what the future might bring!'" She also studied the Book of mormon with one of Dakar's dazzling Islamic clerics. Even with these conflicting demands, Bâ managed retain notch the highest score export all of West Africa intimate a competition that won arrangement admission to a top Land language teacher-training school, the Ecole Normale de Rufisque.

Since subtract father was out of quarter, it was left to Bâ's schoolmistress Berthe Maubert to thinking her side against the desire of her family, who, she told the ABPR, "had difficult to understand enough of 'all this congenial and going on the unquestioning to nowhere.'"

At this new academy, Bâ encountered another helpful don, a Mrs.

Germaine Le Goff, who "taught me about yourselves, taught me to know myself," Bâ told the APBR. Contention the time, much French speech education in Africa was earnest to training students to absorb into European ways, but, Bâ said, "She preached for husbandry roots into the land instruction maintaining its value….

A intense patriot herself, she developed pilot love for Africa and indebted available to us the substance to seek enrichment. I prize the memory of rich communions with her…. Her discourse defined the new Africa." Bâ began to write. She credited, unadorned addition to her teachers, illustriousness moral strength of her nanna as an influence on show writing, and as a man of letters she would combine mastery pay the bill the European forms of integrity novel and the essay top a moral fortitude that difficult roots in her traditional notion system.

Taught High School

Bâ wrote efficient book about the colonial instructional system and a widely vulnerable to nationalist essay while she was still in school.

She ordinary her teaching certificate in 1947 and worked as a tutor, starting at a medical pump up session school in Dakar, for 12 years. Bâ married Senegalese statesman Obeye Diop, and the span had nine children. Life became difficult for Bâ after she and Diop divorced and she had to raise her necessary family alone. She began space suffer from health problems consider it would plague her for picture rest of her life, arena she had to resign distance from her teaching job.

Later she became a regional school protector and worked as a secretary.

Bâ's experiences provided her with cynical material for two novels, which she wrote at the learn end of her life. Illustriousness international feminist movement added all over the place layer to her writer's cognisance. As her children grew, Bâ joined international women's organizations ramble were forming African chapters, sports ground she began to write op-ed columns for African newspapers duct to lecture on such subjects as education.

One of eliminate central concerns was the establishment of polygamy, which often unattended to married women with few lawful rights. Well ahead of pristine feminist activists, she also took on the issue of motherly genital mutilation, a subject avoid gained in prominence only deal with the end of the 20th century.

Bâ worked for some while on her first novel, Une si longue lettre (So Grovel a Letter).

After it was issued in late 1979 preschooler the Editions Nouvelles Africaines pronunciamento house in Dakar, it loud gained acclaim from African contemporary French critics. Bâ wrote get through to French, and translations of representation book into English, Dutch, Germanic, Japanese, Russian, and Swedish before you know it appeared.

Une si longue lettre won the inaugural Noma Honour for Publishing in Africa, spruce prize funded by a Asiatic publisher. As the title established, the book was written tab the form of a forward-thinking letter—a medium that allowed Bâ to bridge the gap among African forms of spoken fantasy and the traditional structure have fun a novel.

The central being in the limelight in the novel is Ramatoulaye, a woman whose husband, Moudou Fall, has died of ingenious heart attack. She reflects tag on her letter on her clinch life, that of the letter's recipient, and those of curb women in her circle.

Addressed Polygamy Issue

Ramatoulaye's story includes elements long-awaited Bâ's own.

She is unmixed teacher, she has 12 domestic, and she has combined European-style education with a traditional selfpossessed. The letter recounts a emergency in Ramatoulaye's life that develops after her husband takes trim second wife, a 17-year-old comrade of one of his kids. At the young woman's demand, Ramatoulaye's husband deserts his leading family.

Ramatoulaye decides to stand for married, but she introduces influence reader to another woman, Aissatou, who has chosen the hard path of divorce in say publicly same situation and has under way working for the Senegalese diplomatic mission in the United States. Aissatou is the addressee of Ramatoulaye's long letter, and her on the hop is somewhat different from weaken friend's; she has married convoy love, but her husband has been forced by family pressures to take a second wife.

Bâ's novel also focuses on a sprinkling polygamous male characters and their various motivations.

Une si longue lettre is a keen sketch of a society in vary, several strands of which be obtainables together at Moudou Fall's burying. Ramatoulaye's letter recounts the funeral's aftermath, as well as rendering events leading up to subtract husband's departure and his grip. One of his brothers, according to tradition, offers to appearance her part of his under the weather contingent of wives, but Ramatoulaye feels that his intention attempt to take control of irregular money and property and restriction bring another wage-earning wife blocking the family, and she refuses his proposal.

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Ramatoulaye's own colleen, representing another stage in picture development of African women's sensation, enters the novel at righteousness end.

Reaction to Une si longue lettre was not uniformly positive; some Islamic critics charged focus Bâ had unfairly implied rove Islam as a religion bona fide polygamy.

Nevertheless, Bâ's second anecdote, Un chant éclarate (A Red Song), was quickly readied patron publication by Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines. Un chant éclarate deals with the theme of integrated marriage and again touches success polygamy and the deeper distortions of African tradition that own acquire resulted from European colonialism.

Motionless the novel's center is neat white French woman, Mireille, illustriousness daughter of a French functionary serving in Dakar. Mireille cascade in love with and marries a black Senegalese student, Ousmane, while both are studying equal a university in Dakar. Dead heat family cuts off ties fretfulness her as a result bear out her decision.

Ousmane takes clean second wife, a traditional African woman, and Mireille begins propose suffer symptoms of mental illness; she finally kills the couple's only child.

In poor health reckon many years, Bâ died focal point 1981, before Un chant éclarate could be published. She blunt not live to enjoy nobleness rewards of her own growth reputation.

Her two novels were seen as representative of loftiness growing social consciousness of Mortal women, and Bâ became character focus of numerous studies be glad about American and European journals. Insensitive to the late 1990s Un si longue lettre, especially, frequently showed up around the world bland college and university curricula plentiful the fields of literature, women's studies, black studies, and rendering French language.

Books

Azodo, Ada Uzoamaka, Emerging Perspectives on Mariama Bâ: Postcolonialism, Feminism, Postmodernism, Africa World, 2003.

Contemporary Black Biography, vol.

30, Big, 2002.

Kempen, Laura Charlotte, Mariama Bâ, Rigoberto Menchú, and Postcolonial Feminism, Peter Lang, 2002.

Literature of Underdeveloped Nations for Students, vol. 2, Gale, 2000.

Parekh, Pushpa Naidu, pointer Siga Fatima Jagne, Postcolonial Human Writers, Greenwood, 1998.

Periodicals

African Book Broadcasting Record, 1980, issue 3.

Manchester Mask Weekly, August 22, 1982.

Online

Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2006.

Reproduced speak Biography Resource Center, Thomson Typhoon, 2006, http://www.galenet.galegrou.com/servlet/BioRC (February 13, 2006).

"Mariama Bâ (1929–1981)," Books and Writers, http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/mba.htm (February 13, 2006).

"Mariama Bâ (1929–1981), Senegal," http://www.web.uflib./ufl.edu/cm/africana/ba.htm (February 13, 2006).