Mariama Bâ

Mariama Bâ was born in 1929 in Dakar, Senegal, then part of French West Africa. She grew up Muslim, attending Koranic school from a young age, and her family was relatively wealthy. Her father served as Minister of Health under the French colonial regime and went on to become one of the first Ministers of State after Senegalese independence. Her mother died when Bâ was young, and so she was raised mostly by her grandparents. Against their wishes she attended college, where she studied law. Upon graduating she became a schoolteacher. Bâ was an outspoken, politically active feminist. In the years leading up to and following Senegalese independence, she wrote essays against French assimilationist policies, joined a number of women’s rights advocacy groups, and penned newspaper articles on education, genital mutilation, and the unequal treatment of women in Senegalese society. She had nine children, whom she raised more or less single-handedly after divorcing her husband. So Long a Letter (1979) was her first novel. Written in French, it was published to immediate literary acclaim. In 1981 the book won the first ever Noma Award for Publishing in Africa, and it went on to become one of the first novels by an African woman to gain international attention. Bâ, whose health had been declining for years, died later that year. Her second novel, A Scarlet Song (1981), was published posthumously.