Mariama Ba was a Senegalese author and feminist, born in Dakar in 1929 and died in 1981, whose two French-language novels were each translated into more than a dozen languages. She is best known for her debut novel So Long a Letter (1979), a semi-autobiographical epistolary work that follows a Senegalese widow reflecting on tradition, polygamy and the position of women in postcolonial Senegalese society; the novel won the first Noma Award for Publishing in Africa in 1980. Ba is regarded as a pioneering figure of feminist and Islamic-feminist literature in West Africa, giving voice to the specific pressures facing educated African women caught between inherited custom and a changing modern world.
Facts
AwardNoma Award for Publishing in Africa, 1980, the award's first recipient, for So Long a Letter (Une si longue lettre). 1 Classification
Original Language Connections
In the Other Atlases
- Also in Geography Atlas: Senegal, nationality there.
Sources
1. Mariama Bâ (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia)Wikipedia lead sentence, opening parenthetical birth-death dates
Mariama Bâ (April 17, 1929, August 17, 1981) was a Senegalese author and feminist.
Wikipedia lead section, second paragraph, Noma Award sentence
The novel was awarded the first Noma Award for Publishing in Africa in 1980.
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