so long a letter by mariama ba pdf download

īâ died in 1981 after a protracted illness, before the publication of her second novel, Un Chant écarlate ( Scarlet Song), which is a love story between two star-crossed lovers from different ethical backgrounds fighting the tyranny of tradition. īâ was married three times and had nine children her third and longest marriage was to a Senegalese member of Parliament, Obèye Diop, but they divorced. She taught from 1947 to 1959, before transferring to the Regional Inspectorate of teaching as an educational inspector. The school's principal began to prepare her for the 1943 entrance examination to a teaching career after he noticed Bâ's intellect and capacity. In this institution, she was prepared for later career as a school teacher. In a teacher training college based in Rufisque (a suburb in Dakar), she won the first prize in the entrance examination and entered the École Normale. However, her father's insistence on giving her an opportunity to continue her studies eventually persuaded them.

Bâ's grandparents did not plan to educate her beyond primary school. During the colonial revolution period and later, girls faced numerous obstacles when they wanted to have a higher education. īâ was a prominent law student at school.

She received her early education in French, while at the same time attending Koranic school.

After her mother's death, Bâ was largely raised in the traditional manner by her maternal grandparents. He was the Minister of Health in 1956 while her grandfather was an interpreter in the French occupation regime. Her father was a career civil servant who became one of the first ministers of state. This short book was awarded the first Noma Award for Publishing in Africa in 1980.īâ was born in Dakar, Senegal, in 1929, into an educated and well-to-do Senegalese family of Lebu ethnicity. In this semi-autobiographical epistolary work, Bâ depicts the sorrow and resignation of a woman who must share the mourning for her late husband with his second, younger wife. Her frustration with the fate of African women is expressed in her first novel, Une si longue lettre (1979 translated into English as So Long a Letter). Mariama Bâ (Ap– August 17, 1981) was a Senegalese author and feminist, whose two French-language novels were both translated into more than a dozen languages.

So long a letter by mariama ba pdf download