Abstract
African women have played a central role in the development of oral literary traditions of countries of the African Sahel historically, yet very few have actually written works and had them published. Among the few who have recently emerged, some have brought new perspectives on historical and contemporary issues as well as innovative techniques in style and narrative structure. Two novels in particular by contemporary women writers from the African Sahel engage issues of women’s agency and the power of narrative authority to interrogate the structures of intersectionality that impact women’s lives: La Derniere epouse (The Last Wife), by Sanou Bernadette Dao of Burkina Faso, and Mariage on Copie (Images of Marriage), by A?cha Fofana of Mali. These works confront the discursive authority of male fictive texts of the post-colonial experience as their female characters seize la parole (the word) to remap representations of traditional male/female relationships.
Highlights
African women have played a central role in the development of oral literary traditions of countries of the African Sahel historically, yet very few have written works and had them published
A number of theorists have identified the destructive nature of the intersectionalities of race, gender and patriarchial power on women of color, among them Crenshaw (1991) (“Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics”) and Collins (1998) (“It’s All in the Family: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Nation”)
Sanou Bernadette Dao is the second woman of Burkina Faso to publish a novel and the “première poétesse” of the country
Summary
Women have played a central role historically in the development of oral literary traditions of countries of the African Sahel, there are very few who have . Scott written works in French and had them published, in the area of the novel Those few who have recently emerged have brought new perspectives on historical and contemporary issues as well as innovative techniques in style and narrative structure. Sanou and Fofana’s fictive universes redeploy traditional unmediated male power and privilege as they determine the contours of women’s lives and desires Most noticeable in their works is the role of the storyteller at the “lyrical centre” of the collective consciousness of the characters. This creates in the reader a sense of having direct access to the scene. Such an approach succeeds in masking authorial intrusions and relinquishing voice and narrative license to the griot
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