bookshy: Francophone African Literature

Source: litterature et ecrivains dailleurs

I hadn’t thought about [becoming Gabon’s first novelist]. I was rather taken up by my reflections, my doubts, my worries, my fears. When the novel came out, I found out that I was the first.

These were the words of Gabonese writer Angèle Rawiri in a 1988 interview for the African women’s magazine, Amina, translated by Cheryl Toman in her book Women Writers of Gabon: Literature and Herstory.

Born in 1954 in Port-Gentil (her father was the president of the Gabonese Senate and poet; her mother, who passed away when Angèle was six, was a teacher), Rawiri was said to be Gabon’s first novelist with Cheryl Toman noting that:

Angèle Rawiri has played quite a unique role in the development of national literature in Gabon and historically speaking, she has set herself apart from other pioneering women authors of any time period or tradition.

Rawiri was said to be quiet about her public life - even though her father was a prominent politician in Gabon, but according to the Historical Dictionary of Gabon, Rawiri studied in France at the Lycée of Alès and earned a baccalaureate at the girls' college at Vanves. In Paris at the Institut Lentonnet, she obtained a second baccalaureate in the commercial translation of English. Rawiri then spent two years in London to perfect her English, and supported herself by playing small roles in James Bond movies and fashion shoots for magazines.

Rawiri returned to her hometown of Port-Gentil in Gabon in 1979, and worked as a translator and interpreter of English for the state oil company, Société Nationale Pétrolière Gabonaise. Toman further notes that it was Rawiri's brother who encouraged her to write her first two novels: Elonga and G’amerakano. By the end of 1980s, Rawiri left Gabon definitively and headed for France where she finished and published her third and final novel, Fureurs et cris de femmes.

While Rawiri had lived in Gabon, France and the UK, in the same 1988 interview in Amina Magazine, Rawiri, considered herself a ‘deracinee’ (uprooted woman) explaining: ‘I never felt at home on African soil and at the same time, I didn’t feel at home in Europe either’. Writing might have been a way for Rawiri to deal with these sentiments of 'perpetual exile' she felt - using it as 'an outlet for exploring aspects fo culture and society that bewildered or enraged her'.

However, unlike other African women writers I have featured so far in this series, Rawiri encountered relatively few obstacles if any in becoming Gabon’s first novelist. In the same Amina interview, Rawiri explained:

I must admit that it was rather easy. Friends who were journalists helped me out by putting me in contact with an editor.

Rawiri's writing led to three published novels - often described as a trilogy (although they do not have much in common) - Elonga, G’amarakano: Au Carrefour, and Fureurs et cris de femmes (Fury and Cries of Women), which are the 'hallmarks of an important decade for Gabonese literature written in French' according to Cheryl Toman.

Toman described Rawiri's first novel, Elonga, as following a young man of Spanish and Gabonese descent, whose Spanish father's dying wish is for his son to leave Spain to reconnect with the country of his already deceased mother’s birth (the fictitious African country of Ntsempolo). Rawiri's second novel, G’amerakano au carrefour, tells the story of Toula, a dismally paid secretary who succumbs to her mothers badgering and is further convinced by her best friend and colleague, Ekata, that she should dramatically modify her appearance if she ever hopes to find her way out of the poor neighbourhood of Igewa.

For Toman, Elonga is 'the least feminist but also the least woman-centred', and could be the reason why it has received the least amount of critical attention:

... critics simply were at a loss as to how to categorise it since women novelists from Gabon, like other African women writers, do tend to give the spotlight to female protagonists.

Rawiri's third novel, Fureurs et cris de femmes (translated to English by Sara Hanaburg as The Fury and Cries of Women) is considered the richest of her fictional prose portraying one woman's life in Central Africa in the late 1980s. It follows Emilienne,

... whose active search for feminism on her own terms is tangled up with cultural expectations and taboos of motherhood, marriage, polygamy, divorce, and passion. She completes her university studies in Paris; marries a man from another ethnic group; becomes a leader in women's liberation; enjoys professional success, even earning more than her husband; and eventually takes a female lover. Yet still she remains unsatisfied. Those closest to her, and even she herself, constantly question her role as woman, wife, mother, and lover. The tragic death of her only child - her daughter Rekia - accentuates Emilienne's anguish, all the more so because of her subsequent barrenness and the pressure that she concede to her husband's taking a second wife.

While working on her fourth novel, Rawiri died on November 15, 2010, in Paris. For French speakers, here's a video of an interview with Angèle Rawiri.

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Mariama Ba around 25. Source: UNESCO

Yes, this is the first time that I wrote a serious novel. I have written before when I was a schoolgirl. I wrote essays for homework which were published. I wrote a dissertation which was published by the ‘Review Espirit’ a long time ago. I have written articles for newspapers, lots of them, but this book is my first serious effort to see the light. This is my first book.

So, said Senegalese writer Mariama Bâ in a 1981 interview with Barbara E. Harrell-Bond. The year before this interview, 1980, Mariama Bâ was awarded the first Noma Award - an annual prize of $3000 endowed by Japanese publisher Shiochi Noma to African writers published within Africa. The award was presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair, which in 1980 had a Black Africa theme.

Mariama Ba being awarded the Noma Prize in 1980. Source: AUFS Report, 1981.

This was for Bâ’s first novel, Une si longue lettre (So Long a Letter) - one of the most widely read works of Francophone African literature. Published in 1979, it follows a Muslim, French-educated, middle-aged Senegalese school teacher, Ramatoulaye, during her iddat, the mourning period of four months and 10 days prescribed for Muslim widows. In this long ‘letter’ written to her best friend Aissatou, Ramatoulaye looks back on her life with Modou Fall, her husband of 30 years, providing readers with a specific insight into her own experiences as well as those of other women.

In her acceptance speech for the Noma, Bâ remarked that she was surprised at winning:

I was very surprised. Even more so because I did not know of the existence of the prize. And even more, I did not even know that my book was being considered for any prize … A friend came to my house to tell me I had won. I was unaware of it. I didn’t even realise that there was prize money … I was even more proud and happy because it was not only a prize for Francophone Africa, but a prize for black Africa. That is, all of French- and English-speaking Africa. There were many candidates, so it was a prize which obviously was important.

Bâ died a year after she received the Noma award after a long battle with cancer, and before her second novel, Un Chant Écarlate (Scarlet Song), was published. Bâ briefly spoke about her second novel during her 1981 interview, when asked if she was ‘working on another book’, and worked on the revisions in order to prepare it for publication after her death:

Yes, and it is finished. I do not know if it is going to receive the same reception as 'Une si longue lettre'. As a matter of fact, it is the reception of 'Une si longue lettre' which makes me more and more hesitant to deliver this work to publishers. This first reception was so good, the book has been so well liked, that I wonder what kind of reception will be given to this other book.

Scarlet Song, published posthumously in 1986, also received international attention. The book deals with an interracial relationship in Senegal and the struggle of women to overcome the traditional system of polygamy and gender discrimination. On the book, Bâ goes on to explain:

I have taken the white wife and the African husband as the theme. Here, if a black woman married to a white man, we can easily accept that, at least more easily accept it … The colonialists took black women as wives and it never was a tragedy, you see … Because here in Senegal, it is the woman who is given into marriage, and belongs to the husband’s family. It is not the same thing with a man. The man bears the family name. He is the root of the tree which flourishes to give fruit. The fruits contain the seed which will make the race live again and nourish the ground. Thus the problem of a white wife is more interesting from the point of view of the mentality of the man’s mother, and from the point of view of society. There are more possible situations. So my book is about a white wife and a black husband.

The book was also set in Senegal and not France because ‘otherwise it would not be interesting’.

If they were in France there would not be any problem. If the book was set in France, in Europe, anywhere else, there would not be a problem. They could isolate themselves from the parents and the others. It would not be the same thing.

Writer and teacher, Mariama Bâ was one of the pioneers of Senegalese literature. Born in Dakar, Senegal in 1929 to a Muslim Lebou family, her father, was a civil servant, 'a teller in the Treasury of French West Africa.' He was also a politician and was the first Minister of Health after the decentralisation bill was passed in 1956. Her paternal grandfather 'Sarakhole (from Bakel) ... was an interpreter in Saint-Louis, then in Dakar where he died.'

Bâ lost her mother when she was very young - 'I only know her through photographs,' she remarked in a 1981 interview, and was raised a Muslim in the traditional manner by her maternal grandparents on an extended family compound close to a mosque. She received her early education in French, while at the same time attending Koranic school with Dakar’s leading clerics. Bâ’s grandparents did not plan to educate her beyond primary school - they did not believe that girls should be taught beyond that. However, her father’s insistence on giving her an opportunity to continue her studies eventually persuaded them, and she attended French school.

I had the good fortune to attend the French school (which is now Berthe Maubert School on Avenue Albert Sarraut) thanks to the perseverance of my father who, whenever he had a holiday, would come to beg my grandparents to continue to grant him this favour.

During school holidays I continued my Koranic studies at the residence of the late Amadou Lamine Diene … He had become the Imam of the main mosque in Dakar, and his nephew, the current Imam, El Hadji Mawdo Sylla, was my teacher. The fact that I went to school didn’t relieve me from the domestic duties little girls had to do. I had my turn at cooking and washing up. I learned to do my own laundry and to wield the pestle because, it was feared, 'you never know what the future might bring!’

Bâ eventually obtained her school-leaving certificate, and won admission to the École Normale, a teacher training college for girls in Rufisque (a suburb in Dakar):

A year after the Primary School Certificate Examination in 1943, I had the joy of coming first in French West Africa at the competitive examination for entry to the École Normake in Rufique. My father was away in Niamey and Mrs. Berthe Maubert (primary school teacher) had the lonely task of overcoming the resistance of my family who had had enough of “all this coming and going on the road to nowhere.”

Her earliest works were essays she wrote (on nationalism) while at the École Normale. Some of her works have now been published. Her first work constitutes essentially a useful method of rejection of the "so-called French assimilationist policy". École Normale is also where Bâ met Mrs. Germaine Le Goff who “taught me about myself” - “taught me to know myself. I cherish the memory of rich communions with her, which have made me a better person."

Bâ also credits her father with strengthening her education:

A man of finance, but also a man of letters, my father taught me to read. A flood of books accompanied his homecomings. It is from him that I learned how to express myself orally. He would have me recite in French what I had learned, and never tired of correcting me.

Bâ graduated as a schoolteacher in 1947, and taught from 1947 to 1959, before transferring to the Senegalese Regional Inspectorate of Teaching as an educational inspector due to her failing health. However, her teaching had been so exceptional that in 1977 President Leopold Senghor founded the Mariama Bâ Boarding School to honour her legacy as an educator. Bâ later married a Senegalese journalist and member of Parliament, Obèye Diop, but divorced him and was left to care for their nine children on her own. By the late 1970s, after most of her children were adult, Ba became a vocal activist for women's rights and a critic of the neocolonial system that had evolved in most of the newly independent African nations.

In addition to So Long a Letter and Scarlet Song, Bâ also wrote La Fonction politique des littératures Africaines écrites (The Political Function of African Written Literatures) in 1981, arguing that Africans should embrace and feel pride in their culture and achievements. While Bâ’s activism was most prevalent in her literature, particularly with her focus on women’s experiences in a traditional Muslim and patriarchal society, Bâ also worked as a journalist where she wrote about women’s issues and participated in women’s organisations.

Bâ was also known to be active in women’s associations and a defender of women’s rights. She emphasised women’s right to education, recognised the importance of women’s education, and fought for it – among other rights – through speeches and articles published in local newspapers. However, similar to African women writers of her generation, such as Flora Nwapa and Buchi Emecheta (women who I will also feature in this series), Bâ refused the label of feminism so as to reject notions widely associated with white feminism, such as the belief that women were better or more important than men. Thus, the label feminism with its negative connotations was rejected.

I end with Bâ ’s last words during her 1981 interview on her thoughts on the Noma prize:

Really, in some ways one can say that the Noma prize has rekindled the fire of hope … This Japanese publisher thinks of promoting African books, to give something so that African literature goes forward. That is the meaning of this gesture for me. The existence of all such prizes is always an encouragement. That is what it really shows. As I was saying earlier, books are an instrument for development and books must not die. We must encourage people to write, to allow the great flourishing of writing.

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'In life, you have to make choices. My choice is to write.' explains Senegalese writer Aminata Sow Fall in an interview with the Washington Post. And write she has done.

Born in 1941 in Saint-Louis, Senegal, Fall is said to be the ‘first published woman novelist from Francophone Black Africa’. To date, Fall has published more than eight novels and a number of essays, including Un grain de vie et d'espérance (Food for thought and tomorrow's life) in 2002 on her reflection on the significance of food in Senegal, followed by some twenty recipes proposed by Senegalese Chef Margo Harley. In June 2015, Fall received the Grand Prix de la Francophonie for her literary work in French.

Aminatta Sow Fall first achieved literary attention with the publication of Le Revenant (The Ghost) published in 1976. As described on the University of Western Australia's African Literature page, it follows:

... an honest post office worker, Bakar, who realises that he is in debt because he has been financing the extravagant needs of his circle of family and friends. So he steals money from his employer and ends up in prison for misappropriation of funds. He is then abandoned by all those who had profited from his extravagance and so Bakar decides to get his revenge.

Peter Hawkins goes on to write that:

... when [Fall] published her first novel, 'Le Revenant', in Dakar in 1976, it was the first time a black African women had written a work of fiction in French which was not obviously and autobiography or memoir.

Fall was also ‘the first Muslim woman writing in this particular context’.

Her second novel, La Grève des bàttu [The Beggars' Strike] was published in 1979 and has been translated into eleven languages, including into English by Dorothy S. Blair. In it, Mour Ndiaye takes draconian measures to rid Dakar's streets from its beggars in order to curry favour with the President. When the beggars are chased out of town, they regroup and reorganise. When the capital's inhabitants find it increasingly difficult to abide by the Prophet's instructions to give alms to the poor, the end of Mour Ndiaye's political career is in sight.

La Grève des bàttu was nominated for the prestigious French literary prize the Prix Goncourt and awarded the Grand Prix litteraire de l’Afrique des Arenes. It has also been adapted for both stage (by Carlyle Brown) and screen (in 2000 by Malian director, Cheikh Oumar Sissoko and called Battu).

On the focus on beggars and begging in La Grève des bàttu, Fall explains in a 2012 interview how ‘many people ask me about that novel’:

Begging is a crutch for this [Senegalese] society. Yes, we do need it, but it is a need that we created. It is not an inherent need. If we take it away, we don’t know what to do with ourselves. We’ve twisted certain teachings in the Koran and we think that our salvation is based, in part, on our charitable offerings. So instead of refusing to let these individuals live on the street and not have access to the most basic of necessities, instead of creating a system where we can be charitable by not relegating someone to destitution, we say that we must have beggars so we can give alms … We forget that in many cases we cause their poverty. And in essence, we want them to stay there. Because it makes us feel better about ourselves. Because we want them to be dependent on us. Because we think we’re following a holier example. In short, we isolate them in order to feel good about ourselves. It is not right, but we use religion to justify it. The Western world does it, too. If someone thinks otherwise, they are in denial.

While Fall’s native tongue is Wolof, she writes exclusively in French. Her writing style - according to Fall, also tends to take a positive outlook as she also explains in this 2012 interview:

So it goes back to how I write. I write about that light, the one that each of us has within us. I do not tell, I show a pattern, example, or path. Our world has changed so drastically that many people don’t even recognise that light anymore – they’ve gotten so wrapped up in this or that, money, success, fame, that they’ve isolated themselves from themselves. Do you see? They have taught themselves to ignore that inner core, that light, which is the very essence of their being. Thus they wander emotionally, figuratively, and sometimes physically, do they not? The solution is to rediscover that light, uncover it, feed it, and let it shine and influence our choices, actions, and behaviour. That’s why the children in my novels succeed – because they, more so than the adults, have the courage to do what is right, by letting the good of the past direct their future.

It's difficult to write about Aminata Sow Fall without mentioning her track record – which, like all the other women featured so far in this series – is pretty fascinating. Her education was split between Senegal and France – spending several years at the Faidherbe grammar school before finishing her secondary schooling at the Van Vo grammar school in Dakar. After obtaining her baccalaureate, Aminata Sow Fall then went to France to train as an interpreter, while taking French language and literature classes at the Sorbonne. In France, a sense of her love for writing is revealed:

Sometimes while studying in the library, she would scribble lines of poetry, short stories, plays and random articles that were never edited for publication.

Fall later dropped the interpreter programme to concentrate on her academic studies – getting a degree in Modern Languages, where she became agrégée de letters. Returning to Senegal in the early 1960s, Fall became a teacher (she first taught at a high school and sometimes at the Institut Cesti, which trained journalists). Later she worked in a group under the auspices of the Commission Nationale de Reforme de l’Enseignement du Francaise (National Reform Commission for the Teaching of French)- adapting the teaching of French language to African realities. There, they produced textbooks for senior classes in French grammar and literature.

Her many accolades also includes: being a member of the Commission for Educational Reform responsible for the introduction of African literature into the French syllabus in Senegal, before becoming director of La Propriété littéraire (The Literary Property) in Dakar (1979-1988). She was appointed the first woman president of Senegal's Writer's Association in 1985. In 1990 she founded the publishing house Éditions Khoudia – named after her mother. Director of the Centre Africain d'Animation et d'Echanges Culturels in Dakar and head of the Centre International d'Etudes, de Recherches et de Réactivation sur la Littérature, les Arts et la Culture that organised regular national and international Conferences in Saint-Louis. In 1997, Aminata Sow Fall was awarded an Honorary Degree at Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts.

‘Fall says she considers herself a novelist first’, in June 2015, Fall received the Grand Prix de la Francophonie for her literary work in French. As explained in the Washington Post interview, 'Fall says she considers herself a novelist'. And one who draws a lot on her imagination - as she explains (also in that Washington Post interview):

‘All great works begin in the imagination …[and] a human being who does not dream realises nothing.’

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Alain Mabanckou's works in English

Back in May 2012, I wrote a post revealing my obsession with wanting to read every book ever published by Alain Mabanckou - award-winning writer from Congo-Brazzaville. Clearly, I was restricted by my inability to read French, but thankfully at that point four of Mabanckou's books had been translated into English - African Psycho (2007), Broken Glass (2009), Memoirs of a Porcupine (2011) and Black Bazaar (2012). Not one to let my obsession go, I followed it up a few months later with a personal reading challenge - to spend a month reading Mabanckou's works that had been translated into English.

I started with African Psycho, which was first published in French 2003 and translated into English by Christine Schwartz Harley in 2007. A disturbingly funny novel, African Psycho centres on Gregorie Nakobomayo - quiet possibly the worst serial killer that never was - who lived in 'He-Who-Drinks-Water-Is-An-Idiot' and was plotting to kill his girlfriend, Germaine. I followed it up with Mabanckou's second novel to be translated into English, Broken Glass (published in French in 2005 and translated into English in 2009 by Helen Stevenson). The story follows Broken Glass, a 64-year-old former teacher madly in love with the bottle and a regular customer at the local bar Credit Gone West in the Trois-Cents neighbourhood. The owner, Stubborn Snail (don't you just love the names?) - wanting the bar to not 'vanish one day', gave Broken Glass a notebook 'to record, witness and pass on the history of the place', and boy did Broken Glass do that.

While African Psycho had a 9-page non-stop narrative, Broken Glass was written with 'no full stops, only commas and more commas'. Yet, reading African Psycho and Broken Glass made me realise something about Alain Mabanckou - he wrote what he wanted, how he wanted and didn't seem to be confined by specific rules. Plus, I loved how disturbing, weird and humourous his writing was. So two books in, I was hooked! I had gone into the mind of a wanna-be serial killer, an alcoholic/former teacher/aspiring writer, and now I was off to find out what a porcupine thinks.

First published in French in 2006 and translated into English in 2011 (also by Helen Stevenson), Memoirs of a Porcupine is about the (animal) double of a human. The porcupine tells us his life story of carrying out murders with (and for) his human master, Kibandi. Similar to Broken Glass, there are no full stops, only commas and more commas. My last book in my Alain Mabanckou month was Black Bazaar (first published in French in 2009 and translated into English in 2012 by Sarah Ardizonne).

Unlike the first three books, Black Bazaar was the first book not set in Congo-Brazzaville, but in Paris. It followed the lives of African immigrants in France - as told by the narrator, Buttologist, who has lived in Paris for 15 years. Buttologist is a sapeur (a member of the Society of Ambience-makers and People of Elegance), spends time at an Afro-Cuban bar with other African immigrants in Paris, and is also an aspiring writer (like Broken Glass, in well, Broken Glass). Black Bazaar is his journal on everything - his relationship with Original Colour (his ex-girlfriend), his experiences with his racist neighbour, the 'Arab around the corner', his time at the Afro-Cuban bar with his friends, and even his view on colonialism and post-colonial Africa.

By the end of my month reading Mabanckou's works, it was official, I was a hardcore fan. Thankfully, I didn't have to wait too long for Mabanckou's next offering. By 2013, Tomorrow I'll be Twenty - the fictionalised memoir of Alain Mabanckou's childhood in Pointe Noire - was released. Translated by Helen Stevenson, it was first published in French in 2010.

Narrated through the voice of ten year old Michel, who lives in Pointe Noire, Congo in the 1970s, I must confess - without a doubt - this is my all-time favourite of Alain Mabanckou's books. I loved how historical events, such as the Cold War, were intertwined with the daily lives of a family living Congo-Brazzaville in the1970s. More than that I absolutely adored Michel. One my favourite lines from Michel - "I'll keep you in the castles I've got in my heart too, where no one can harm you".

When interviewed by the Africa Book Club on the importance of writing this story, Mabanckou writes:

It was very important because I figured out that we had no stories told through the voice of a kid in Congolese literature. In 'Tomorrow I'll be Twenty', I wanted to explain the way we were living under this Congolese regime called 'Soviet Socialism'. We were a red country! Everything was Marx and Engels, about materialism and the philosophy coming from the USSR.

By now I was five books in. You would also think by this time my obsession with reading Alain Mabanckou's books would have died down a little. Not one bit!

This hasn't been helped by the fact that since 2013, Alain Mabanckou has published four other books in English. There's Blue White Red (first published in French in 1999 and translated by Alison Dundy in 2013). As well as his essay - Letter to Jimmy (first published in French in 2007 and translated by Sara Meli Ansari in 2014). Letter to Jimmy is Mabanckou's 'love letter' to James Baldwin which was published in France in 2007 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Baldwin's death. It also serves (indirectly/unintentionally) as an introduction to Baldwin's writings. His memoir - The Lights of Pointe-Noire (first published in French in 2013 and translated by his regular translator Helen Stevenson in 2015), sees Mabanckou return to Pointe-Noire after twenty-three years away; and most recently is Black Moses (first published in French in 2015 and translated by by Helen Stevenson in 2017).

Five years later I like to think I haven't done too bad with my challenge - seven novels and one essay. Although I am yet to read Black Moses - it's currently on my reading list for this summer - or Blue White Red (very sad to say that is the one book that is not in my collection) ... and to think, there is still there is so much more of Mabanckou's work that are yet to be translated into English - poetry collections, novels and essays and non-fiction. Still, it has been an absolutely amazing journey reading Alain Maanckou's books and being transported into the minds of very weird and wonderful character - and along the way, whether it was about childhood, folktales, magic, murder, migrating or returning home, the dark humour that first struck me when reading African Psycho hasn't gone away.

My Mabanckou Collection.

As I write this, I am counting down to July 2nd. Africa Writes - London's top African literary and book festival - returns in a month, and this year Alain Mabanckou headlines it. Let's just say, when I initially found out, I might have been a little too excited. Yet, if I'm honest, I'm also a little nervous. Sometimes it's difficult meeting people whose works and writing you admire. I'm going to try not to think to much about that for now. All I know is I've got my ticket and I'll most certainly be front row paying very close attention to Mabanckou as he explores language, style, politics and his journey as a writer beginning in Pointe-Noire.

PS. If you want to find out more about Alain Mabanckou, here's a recent essay on Brittle Paper on Mabanckou himself, as well as another essay from 2016 on World Literature that takes you to the world of Alain Mabanckou and this conversation between Binyavanga Wainainan and Alain Mabanckou.

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