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Mariama Ba (1929-1981). Senegal.An accomplished teacher and feminist, her first published and best-known novel, Une Si Longue Lettre received the 1980 Noma Award for Publishing in Africa. Published in French in 1979, an English translation followed in 1981. It has been called "the most deeply felt presentation of the female condition in African fiction" (Abiola Irele, West Africa).Her second novel, Le Chant Ecarlate, was published posthumously in 1981. Born into an influential Dakar family (her father became the first Senegalese Minister of Health in 1956), she was educated against the will of her maternal grandparents, who raised her. She attended the École Normal (Teacher's College) with the highest exam score in 1943 for all of colonial French West Africa. Maintaining that writing in Africa has always been an essentially political act, several of her essays were published and influenced Francophone African society even before she began writing feminist newspaper articles much later in life. (DR) Une Si Longue Lettre. 1980. Dakar, Senegal: Nouvelles Editions Africaines.
Translated as So Long a Letter by Modupe Bode-Thomas. 1981. Ibadan, Nigeria: New
Horn Press. |
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