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Mariama Bâ was a Senegalese francophone author, teacher, and feminist who was born in Dakar to a well-off Muslim family. A feminist, she began to criticize gender inequality in African society from a young age, while being raised in a very traditional household and having to fight to gain an education. As she grew older, she became involved in women's organizations and advocated for social change in Africa as well as women's education. She married but then divorced a member of the Senegalese parliament, caring for their nine children as a result. This tumultuous life and struggle with tradition are well represented in So Long A Letter (), her first novel, which won the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa.
Tragically, Bâ died a year later after suffering from illness, before her second novel, Scarlet Song, could be published.
Study Guides on Works by Mariama Bâ
Scarlet SongMariama Bâ
Scarlet Song is a novel by notable author Mariama Bâ published in (2 years after her death). The novel, about a couple with ethical and cultural differences, garnered international and critical attent
Biography of Mariama Bâ by Lauren Daugherty
Context
In the s, Senegal was a new, independent nation. It had previously been ruled in succession by the Portuguese, the Dutch and finally the French, becoming a part of French West Africa around half a century earlier. With independence, Senegal struggled to create its own cultural identity. In , the young nation wrote its first constitution, and three years later its only political party became the Senegalese Progressive Union. About a decade later, a three-party political system was introduced.
After being citizens of French West Africa for many years, many individuals had assimilated to aspects of French culture with its norms. As a result, the nation created a unique blend of Islamic religious beliefs and practices, African cultural norms and French influence, resulting in the Senegalese values that are still a hybrid of practices today. While different, all three cultures – African, French and Muslim – have traditionally viewed women as a subordinate sex whose primary responsibilities are domestic and who live in the shadows of their husbands. Mariama Bâ used her novels, influenced by her personal experience as a Muslim
Mariama Bâ ()
Writer and political activist Mariama Bâ was born in in Dakar, Senegal to a well-to-do family. Her father worked in the French colonial administration and in became the Minister of Health of Senegal. Her mother died when she was young. Bâ was raised by her maternal grandparents who emphasized conservative Muslim values. She attended a religious school, but was also educated in the French tradition. Due to the intervention of her father, she was enrolled in in the Ecole Normale (Teacher Training School) at Rufisque, a town some 25 miles away from Dakar where she received her diploma in Bâ worked as a teacher from to , before becoming an academic inspector. During this period, Bâ had nine children with her husband, Obeye Diop. The couple separated and Bâ was forced to raise her children as a single parent.
By the late s, after most of her children were adult, Bâ turned to political activity. She became a vocal activist for women&#;s rights in Africa and a critic of the neocolonial system that had evolved in most of the newly independent African nations. She was also concerned with and wrote about a number of feminist issues such as polygamy, mistreatment o
Ba, Mariama –
Senegalese novelist Mariama Bâ (–) was catapulted to international prominence with the publication of her first novel, Un si longue lettre, which appeared in when the author was 51 years old. At the time, the novel was a rarity in that it had been written by an African woman, and it was especially noteworthy because of Bâ's origins in the predominantly Islamic country of Senegal.
Viewed from a wider perspective, Bâ was a writer who made valuable explorations of the terrain where African traditional cultures met influences brought by European colonialism. As a so-called "postcolonial" writer with a feminist orientation, Bâ gained wide attention from Western critics and students of literature, and the influence of her work increased following her death. Bâ wrote only two novels, but they stand as vivid portraits of the difficult situations faced by women in African societies, and they remain relevant beyond a purely Senegalese context.
Descended from Civil Servants
Mariama Bâ was born in in Dakar, the capital city of Senegal, on Africa's Atlantic coast. Senegal at the time was a department of French West Africa; it had been under French control for several c
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