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A long way home book wiki5/29/2023 The author was praised for her involvement in expanding African literature as well as feminism through personal accounts of her life. ![]() Some women in Senegal saw fault in polygamy and fought against it.Īissatou leaves her husband for practising polygamy and Ramatoulaye says no to marriage to another man. The letter was also used to understand women's views on polygamy. Ramatoulaye and Aissatou's friendship helped them break away from social norms, gaining social and political respect without a male. The letter was used in the western hemisphere to study how strong bonds women formed influenced them. Literary scholar Abiola Irele called it "the most deeply felt presentation of the female condition in African fiction". Miller found Bâ's So Long a Letter more journal-like, in that it held her written letter with no one answering back. The character Ramatoulaye's insistence on being heard and providing inside commentary on the downside of polygyny, made Esonwanne question the part gender plays in this new era of the world.Īuthor and Yale professor Christopher L. Īuthor and professor Uzoma Esonwanne interpreted the book as a challenge to colonialism while also acknowledging colonial practices. Some called it a novel while others referred to Bâ's work as a letter. The letter covered many topics such as polygamy, citation required Senegalese class hierarchy, and religion, so it was difficult to place the genre of the book. Throughout this short and compelling novel, Ramatoulaye details to Aissatou, who experienced a similar but different marital situation, how she emotionally dealt with and was changed by his betrayal, his death, and by being a single mother of many. She transitions the tone and time by discussing the life she had with her husband, from the beginning of their relationship to his betrayal of a thirty year marriage by secretly marrying his daughter's school best friend to the life he had with his second wife. Ramatoulaye begins by recalling and describing the emotions that flooded her during the first few days after her husband's death and speaks in detail about how he lost his life. The letter is written while Ramatoulaye is going through ' Iddah, a four month and ten day mourning process that widow of the Muslim Senegalese culture must follow. So Long a Letter is written as a series of entries in a long letter from the main character Ramatoulaye Fall to her best friend Aissatou following the sudden death from heart attack of Ramatoulaye's husband Modou Fall. It won the first Noma Award for Publishing in Africa in 1980. The novel is often used in literature classes focusing on women's roles in post-colonial Africa. ![]() As she gives her friend the details of her husband's death, she recounts the major events in their lives. The occasion for writing is Ramatoulaye's recent widowhood. ![]() Its theme is the condition of women in Western African society.Īs the novel begins, Ramatoulaye Fall is beginning a letter to her lifelong friend Aissatou Bâ. So Long a Letter ( French: Une si longue lettre) is a semi-autobiographical epistolary novel originally written in French by the Senegalese writer Mariama Bâ. ![]() 1979 (Les Nouvelles Éditions Africaines du Sénégal)
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