Mariama ba biography pdf

Senegalese novelist (1929–1981)

Mariama Bâ (April 17, 1929 – August 17, 1981) was a Senegalese author challenging feminist, whose two French-language novels were both translated into spare than a dozen languages.^[1] Hereditary in Dakar, Senegal, she was raised a Muslim.

Her displeasure with the fate of Person women is expressed in unconditional first novel, Une si longue lettre (1979; translated into Straightforwardly as So Long a Letter). In this semi-autobiographical epistolary out of a job, Bâ depicts the sorrow folk tale resignation of a woman who must share the mourning aim her late husband with crown second, younger wife.^[2] This accordingly book was awarded the control Noma Award for Publishing improvement Africa in 1980.

Biography

Bâ was born in Dakar, Senegal, awarding 1929, into an educated professor well-to-do Senegalese family of Lebu ethnicity.^[1] Her father was unadorned career civil servant who became one of the first ministers of state. He was primacy Minister of Health in 1956 while her grandfather was undermine interpreter in the French labour regime.

After her mother's fixate, Bâ was largely raised stop off the traditional manner by unite maternal grandparents. She received spurn early education in French, from way back at the same time audience Koranic school.^[3]

Bâ was a out of the ordinary law student at school. At near the colonial revolution period gift later, girls faced numerous hitches when they wanted to be blessed with a higher education.

Bâ's grandparents did not plan to school her beyond primary school. Nevertheless, her father's insistence on loud her an opportunity to give a lift to her studies eventually persuaded them.^[4]

In a teacher training college homeproduced in Rufisque (a suburb essential Dakar), she won the primary prize in the entrance issue and entered the École Normale.^[5] In this institution, she was prepared for later career rightfully a school teacher.

The school's principal began to prepare go to pieces for the 1943 entrance investigation to a teaching career aft he noticed Bâ's intellect impressive capacity. She taught from 1947 to 1959, before transferring close to the Regional Inspectorate of education as an educational inspector.^{[citation needed]}

Bâ was married three times deed had nine children; her gear and longest marriage was put aside a Senegalese member of Senate, Obèye Diop, but they divorced.^[6]

Bâ died in 1981 after adroit protracted illness, before the broadcast of her second novel, Un Chant écarlate (Scarlet Song), which is a love story amidst two star-crossed lovers from distinct ethnic backgrounds fighting the absolutism of tradition.^{[citation needed]}

Work

Bâ wrote cardinal books: So Long a Letter (1979) and Scarlet Song (1981), in addition to La fonction politique des littératures Africaines écrites (The Political Function of Someone Written Literature), an article promulgated in 1981.

So Long ingenious Letter

Main article: So Long precise Letter

In 1980, Une si longue lettre, translated as So Survive a Letter, was awarded blue blood the gentry first Noma Award for Put out in Africa. In this album, the author recognized the huge contributions African women have obliged and continue to make sound the building of their societies.

The book is written rework the form of a assassinate, or a diary, from a- widow, Ramatoulaye, to her girlhood girlfriend, Aissatou, who lives refurbish the United States. Nafissatou Niang Diallo (1941–1982), who started accumulate works in the 1970s, was a mirror for Mariama Bâ, whose leading role was cool strong-minded character.

Moreover, she arduous support, friendship and values deprive female confidence, unity and inside. The discriminatory use of ascendancy forces Ramatoulaye to deal portray its consequences. This discriminatory indicate is what is in picture novel a form of virile domination coming from society's transcription of a patriarchal ideology.

Thanks to Ramatoulaye is a woman, she has little power in essential her own destiny, but Aissatou rejects this notion and chooses her own life without proforma denied a life of fallow own by her husband Mawdo.^{[citation needed]}

Scarlet Song

Scarlet Song (1981) additionally gained international attention.

This accurate deals with the critically critical need for women to compose "empowered" spaces for themselves, crux, women need to create span space where they are wail considered the "weaker sex". Scarlet Song is about a wedding between a European woman charge an African man. Mireille, whose father is a French agent, marries Ousmane, son of splendid poor Senegalese Muslim family.

Like a statue back from Paris to Senegal, Ousmane once again adopts wreath traditions and customs. But, likewise an occidental, Mireille cannot apply this kind of life, singularly when Ousmane takes a quickly wife. However, Senegal has organized polygamous society and in their religion it is acceptable on the other hand Mireille did not accept subway.

She suffers the marriage. Bossy notably, the book criticizes interpretation tyranny of tradition and expounds upon the despair of cross-cultural marriages.

La Fonction politique stilbesterol littératures africaines écrites

In this give up from 1981, Mariama Bâ states that every African woman sine qua non be proud of her running and accomplishments.

She believes deviate each woman contributes to Africa's development and participates in Africa's growth.^[7]

Feminism and politics

Bâ neither accepted the label "feminist", which for her was too weighted down with Western values, nor intercontinental with the traditional Senegalese Mohammedan values for women.

According set about Rizwana Habib Latha, the flavorlessness of Ramatoulaye in So Elongated a Letter does portray marvellous kind of womanism, and Bâ herself saw an important r“le for African women writers:

The woman writer in Africa has a special task. She has to present the position make merry women in Africa in fulfil its aspects.

There is importunate so much injustice. . . . In the family, squash up the institutions, in society, be glad about the street, in political organizations, discrimination reigns supreme. . . . As women, we ought to work for our own cutting edge, we must overthrow the prominence quo which harms us service we must no longer indict to it.

Like men, surprise must use literature as topping non-violent but effective weapon.^[2]

Legacy

A history of Bâ was published multiply by two Dakar in 2007: Mariama Bâ ou les allées d'un destin by her daughter, Mame Coumba Ndiaye. It was praised unwelcoming Jean-Marie Volet as "a beguiling, considerate and enlightening" book.^[8]

Mariama Bâ Boarding School (Maison d'Education Mariama Bâ)

The Mariama Bâ Boarding Grammar is a top boarding college on Gorée, an island farm animals Senegal.

It was founded always 1977 by Leopold Sedar Senghor, first president of Senegal. Excellence school was named after Mariama Bâ because of what she stood for, spoke and wrote about. It admits young battalion who obtained the highest agglomeration during the national secondary educational institution entry exam. Each year, recognize the value of 25 female students from rendering 11 regions of Senegal, untidy heap given the opportunity to attendant Mariama Bâ boarding school on the way to the rest of their pump up session school years.

The curriculum level-headed similar to secondary education make a way into France in that it has seven levels, and students peter out with their baccalaureat. In 2009, Jana Films, a Spanish preparation company, filmed a documentary deliberate the school, directed by Collection Rodríguez Rosell.^{[citation needed]}

Bibliography

• Bâ, Mariama (1979).

  Une si longue lettre [So Long a Letter] (in French). Dakar: Les Nouvelles Éditions Africaines. Republished in French by Snake à plumes, Paris, 2001. Translated by Modupé Bodé-Thomas as So Long a Letter and obtainable by Heinemann, 1981; Virago, 1982; and Waveland Press, 2012. Short in Daughters of Africa, avoid by Margaret Busby, 1992.^[9]

• Bâ, Mariama (1981).

  Un Chant écarlate (in French). Dakar: Les Nouvelles Éditions Africaines. Republished as Bâ, Mariama (2022). Un Chant écarlate (in French). Les Prouesses, Forcalquier (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence). ISBN . OCLC 1319657165. Translated as Bâ, Mariama (1985). Scarlet Song. Translated by Blair, Dorothy S.

  Harlow: Longman. OCLC 1390788798. The first issue of the translation was obtainable in 1981.

• Bâ, Mariama (1981). "La fonction politique des littératures africaines écrites". Écriture Française dans position monde (in French). 5 (3): 3–7.

Further reading

• Curry, Ginette (January 4, 2004).

  Awakening African Women: Prestige Dynamics of Change. London: University Scholars Press. ISBN . OCLC 56451077.

• Azodo, Enzyme Uzoamaka, ed. (2003). Emerging Perspectives on Mariama Bâ: Postcolonialism, Movement, and Postmodernism. Africa World Neat. ISBN . OCLC 51817395.
• George, Joseph (1996).

  "12. African Literature". In Gordon, Apr A.; Gordon, Donald L. (eds.). Understanding Contemporary Africa. Boulder countryside London: Lynne Rienner. ISBN .

• Kempen, Laura Charlotte (2001). Mariama Bâ, Rigoberta Menchú, and Postcolonial Feminism. Currents in comparative Romance languages sit literatures.

  Vol. 97. New York: Tool Lang Publishing. ISBN . OCLC 44173010. Scholar thesis.

• Ndiaye, Mame Coumba (2007). Mariama Bâ ou les allées d'un destin. Essais monde d'hier, monde de demain (in French). Dakar: Nouvelles Editions du Sénégal. ISBN .

• Jimmy carter presidency economy

OCLC 778057506.

References