Mariama Bâ
17 April 1929 – 17 August 1981
Mariama Bâ (1929–1981) was a Senegalese author and teacher whose epistolary novel Une si longue lettre (So Long a Letter, 1979) won the first Noma Award for Publishing in Africa and became a foundational work of African women's writing. A schoolteacher and later school inspector, she wrote about polygamy and the position of women in Senegalese society; her second novel, Un chant écarlate, appeared posthumously in 1981.
Lived at the same time
Well-documented people whose lives overlapped with Mariama Bâ.
- Ahmad Shamlou (1925–2000) Overlapped 52 years →
- Akio Morita (1921–1999) Overlapped 52 years →
- Alan Paton (1903–1988) Overlapped 52 years →
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Overlapped 52 years →
- Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) Overlapped 52 years →
- Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) Overlapped 52 years →
Life events
Born in Dakar in French West Africa; her father later became one of the first Senegalese ministers of health.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgFollowing her mother's early death she was raised in a traditional Muslim household by her grandparents and attended Koranic and French schools.
Completed teacher training at the École Normale for girls in Rufisque, finishing first in her cohort.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgTaught in Senegalese schools for twelve years before becoming a regional school inspector.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgMarried the politician Obèye Diop, with whom she had nine children; the couple later divorced.
Her first novel, an epistolary work about a widow reflecting on polygamy and friendship, was published by Les Nouvelles Éditions Africaines in Dakar.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgUne si longue lettre received the inaugural Noma Award, presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgDied of cancer in Dakar at the age of 52, shortly before the publication of her second novel, Un chant écarlate.
Source: en.wikipedia.org