So Long a Letter (Ba)

So Long a Letter
Mariama Ba, (trans., Modupe Bode-Thomas) 1987
Heinemann Publishing
96 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780435913526

Summary
So Long a Letter is a sequence of reminiscences recounted by the (fictional) recently widowed Sengalese school teacher Ramatoulaye. It is a record of Ramatoulaye's emotional struggle for survival after her husband's abrupt decision to take a second wife.

The novel is a perceptive testimony to the plight of thoes articulate women who live in a social milieux dominated by attitudes and values that deny them their proper place.

So Long a Letter won the first Noma Award for Publishing in Africa, and was recognised as one of Africa's 100 Best Books of the 20th Century in an initiative organised by the Zimbabwe International Book Fair. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—1929
• Where—Dakar, Senegal, Africa
• Died—1981
• Education—Ecole Normale, Senegal
• Awards—The first Noma Prize for Publishing in Africa, 1980

Mariama Ba was a Senegalese author and feminist, who wrote in French. Born in Dakar, she was raised a Muslim, but at an early age came to criticise what she perceived as inequalities between the sexes of the African and Islamic traditions.

Her frustration with the fate of African women is expressed in her first novel, So Long a Letter. In it she depicts the sorrow and resignation of a woman who must share the mourning for her late husband with his second and younger wife. Abiola Irele called it "the most deeply felt presentation of the female condition in African fiction." This short book was awarded the first Noma Prize for Publishing in Africa in 1980.

Ba died a year later, in 1981, after a protracted illness before publishing her second novel, Scarlet Song. That novel describes the hardships a woman faces when her husband abandons her for a younger woman.

In addition to her career as a writer, Ba was also a teacher and feminist. She was among the first to illustrate the disadvantaged position of women in African society, focusing on the importance of the grandmother, mother, sister, daughter, cousin and friend—how each deserves the title, “mother of Africa.” Her source of determination and commitment to the feminist cause stemmed from her background, her parent’s life and her schooling.

Ba was born in Dakar Senegal in 1929, into an educated and well-to-do Senegalese family. Her father was a career civil servant who became Minister of Health in 1956 (one of the first ministers of state). One of her grandfathers served as an interpreter in the French occupation regime.

After her mother’s death, Ba was raised largely in the traditional manner by her maternal grandparents. Altough she received an early education in French, and attended a Koranic school, her grandparents had no plans to educate her beyond primary school. It was ony at her father's insistence that she continued her studies, eventually entering the Ecole Normale, where she prepared for a career as a school teacher. Ba taught from 1947 to 1959, before transferring to the Regional Inspectorate of Teaching as an educational inspector. She also married a Senegalese member of Parliament, Obeye Diop, but divorced him and was left to care for their nine children.

Ba saw the failure of African liberation struggles, and her earliest works call for a rejection of the “French assimilationist policy.” She also advocated a reconsideration and reinvigor-ation of African life—criticizing the unequal balance of power between men and married women, in particular. Ba became active in women’s associations, defending women’s rights and promoting female education through speeches and articles in local newspapers. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)

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Book Reviews
So Long a Letter is a landmark book—a sensation in its own country and an education for outsiders. Mariama Ba, a longtime women's activist, set out to write a book that exposed the double standard between men and women in Africa. The result, So Long a Letter, eventually won the first Noma Award for Publishing in Africa. The book itself takes the form of a long letter written by a widow, Ramatoulaye, to her friend, over the mandatory forty-day mourning period following the death of a husband. Both women had married for love and had happy, productive marriages; both were educated, had work they loved and were intellectually alive. During their lives, both of these women's husbands chose to take a second wife—and each woman then made a different choice. Ramatoulaye decided to stay married, although it meant rarely seeing her husband and knowing that he was squandering money on a young girl, a friend of her own daughter. Ramatoulaye's friend divorced her husband and eventually left the country, settling in the United States. In her letter, Ramatoulaye examines her life and that of other women of Senegal—their upbringing and training and the cultural restrictions placed upon them. It is a devastating attack, made all the more powerful because of the intelligence and maturity of the narrator and the ability of Mariama Ba to honor two very different choices within one framework.
Erica Bauermeister - 500 Great Books by Women

It is not only the fact that this is the most deeply felt presentation of the female condition in African fiction that gives distinction to this novel, but also its undoubted literary qualities, which seem to place it among the best novels that have come out of our continent.
West Africa

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Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for So Long a Letter:

1. Talk about the treatment of women—in terms of upbringing, training, and cultural restrictions—in Senegal.

2. How does Ramatoulaye's life in Africa and Aissatou's life in the United States differ? How do their view of men and marriage differ? Why does Ramatoulaye decide to stay married to her husband, while her friend divorces hers. Which woman's decision to you agree with...or were both decisions the correct one for each woman?

3. What, if anything, does Ramatoulaye learn from her correspondence with her girlhood friend?

4. How does Ramatoulaye rationalize the differences between men and women? Do you agree...or disagree with her views?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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