Fatou Diome Research Articles

Afropean Female Selves. Migration and Language in the Life Writing of Fatou Diome and Igiaba Scego by Christopher Hogarth (review)

Afropean Female Selves. Migration and Language in the Life Writing of Fatou Diome and Igiaba Scego by Christopher Hogarth (review)

Home, Place and Displacement in Fatou Diome's The Belly of the Atlantic (2006)

Home, Place and Displacement in Fatou Diome's The Belly of the Atlantic (2006)

Afropean Aporias: Problematic Cultural Hybridity in Léonora Miano’s L’intérieur de la nuit and Fatou Diome’s Le Ventre de l’Atlantique

Though still arguably marginal in the notoriously centralized French language literary landscape, texts produced by Afropean authors, meaning authors of sub-Saharan origin born or currently residing in Europe, now constitute a corpus of their own with well-known authors, including Alain Mabanckou, Léonora Miano, Abdourahman Waberi, and Fatou Diome, gaining in readership and reach. Central to their works is the consideration of culturally hybrid identities whose multi-belongingness across and beyond continental sub-Saharan and European spaces is depicted in an overwhelmingly positive light. This article diverges from past scholarship through its consideration of the difficult identarian compromise for the culturally hybrid protagonists in Miano's L'intérieur de la nuit and Diome's Le Ventre de l'Atlantique. Close reading of these texts, and namely of the experiences of their female Afropean protagonists, suggests a more nuanced, complex, and less positive vision of contemporary Afropeanity than that lauded by theorists concerning a celebrated, emancipatory, and overwhelmingly coveted condition of postmodernity.

Worldwide Women Writers in Paris: Francophone Metronomes by Alison Rice

Reviewed by: Worldwide Women Writers in Paris: Francophone Metronomes by Alison Rice Julia Praud Rice, Alison. Worldwide Women Writers in Paris: Francophone Metronomes. Oxford UP, 2021. ISBN 978-0-19-284577-1. Pp. xi + 307. With an unconventional, syncopated approach, clear prose, a musically thematic structure, and a broad theoretical base providing key references for researchers in the field, this polyphonic analysis of eighteen women writers (Evelyne Accad, Etel Adnan, Eva Almassy, Nathacha Appanah, Bessora, Hélène Cixous, Maryse Condé, Fatou Diome, Chahdortt Djavann, Eun-Ja Kang, Julia Kristeva, Anna Moï, Pia Petersen, Zahia Rahmani, Leïla Sebbar, Yumiko Seki, Shumona Sinha, Svit Brina) from around the world, will be useful to both seasoned and emerging scholars. These writers who hail from countries ranging from Algeria, Iran, Lebanon, and Japan to South Korea, Hungary, Bulgaria, Senegal, and Slovenia, have chosen to live in Paris and publish in French. Although not an exhaustive list, they are representative of the types of writers who "are contributing to a revolution in the Francophone literary landscape" (1). Drawing upon these remarkable interviews that "chronicle a particular time in French literary history" and "mark what might be considered a moment of transition toward greater acceptance of women writers from outside of France," Alison Rice composed this book with a foundation set in the theoretical works of Roland Barthes, Daniel Barenboim, Edward Said, Françoise Lionnet, Shu-mei Shih, Christopher Miller, and others (14). In Worldwide Women Writers, Rice anticipates questions, tackles contested terminology, defines key terms, and refrains from making assumptions about her readers' prior knowledge of these writers, or of the theoretical references she provides. For example, she addresses the debate surrounding the terms francophone and world literature, underlines multiple perspectives, and allows the writers to speak for themselves. Her exploration of the publishing world, and discussion of current practices in literary criticism, also open possibilities for new lines of inquiry. With thoughtful and thought-provoking explanations, the author's use of music as a "fil conducteur" provides the conceptual framework, terminology, and opportunities for categorization that make this project come to life. The juxtaposition of musical lexicon (rhythms, odes, overtures, suites, preludes, postludes, interludes, glissandos, acapella, chord progression, chorus, interpretation, riff) and literary analysis, organizes her study and allows her to forgo traditional categorization of these writers. Opting instead for what Françoise Lionnet termed a "transversal comparative approach," Rice encourages her readers to engage with this study as they choose, according to their own "passions and interests […] whether melodically, harmonically, or contrapuntally" (21). Finally, although Worldwide Women Writers can stand alone, readers will be delighted to know that "these women's voices are readily available online to confirm and complexify, corroborate, and elaborate" should they wish to listen to and engage directly with them (2). Indeed, access to all eighteen of Rice's archived interviews is available through her website, Francophone Metronomes website (www.francophonemetronomes.com). [End Page 285] Julia Praud United States Military Academy, West Point Copyright © 2023 American Association of Teachers of French

Approche géocritique du paysage salé dans la littérature diomienne

"In Le ventre de l’Atlantique (2003), Celles qui attendent (2010) and Impossible de grandir (2013), Fatou Diome presents a literary “ego-geography” linked to the identity and landscapes of the Saloum Delta. The femalelink with thelandscape becomes the central axis of this study, while analysing thesymbolic and linguistic representationsthat generate paradigms of meaning according to the position that the salty substance occupies in the convergence between nature, culture, space and memory. If, for Michel Collot (2014), literary geography is the expression of a concrete, affective and symbolic relationship that links, according to this research, women to the landscape, geocriticism will allow us to shed light on the salty topos in the Senegalese female imaginary."

Jeux réflexifs et procédés métafictionnels dans Kétala de Fatou Diome

Cet article ambitionne à relever les procédés métafictionnels qui impliquent une narration introvertie dans le roman Kétala de l’écrivaine africaine Fatou Diome. Il s’attache aussi à dépister leurs renvois en essayant, toutefois, de relier la performance textuelle de l’auteure à son expérience personnelle, pour voir l’investissement des jeux réflexifs que Diome relie à un véritable travail narratif, qu’elle appelle : le mot-motage.

Littérature francophone de migration et d’exil – quelle approche de lecture pour développer les compétences interculturelles en FLE ?

This article discusses the reading of francophone literature aimed at developing (inter)cultural competence in the language classroom. The distinction of the three approaches: experiential, literary and discursive, has made it possible to grasp the mechanisms and resources that the corresponding modes of reading literary texts are likely to mobilize and transform in the learner. This theoretical framework was applied to the analysis of learners’ opinions written after the reading of Fatou Diome’s Le ventre de l’Atlantique. From the perspective of the development of (inter)cultural competences, the analysis made it possible to see, among other things, how the learners understand the culture represented in the book.

Oceanic bellies and liquid feminism in Fatou Diome’s Le Ventre de l’Atlantique

ABSTRACT Winner of the 2003 Prix des Hémisphères Chantal Lapicque, and translated into German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and English, Fatou Diome’s 2003 novel, Le Ventre de l’Atlantique [ The Belly of the Atlantic, 2006] plays on the image of the Atlantic as an oceanic belly. This article explores the usefulness of the black Atlantic epistemology (Glissant 1990, Gilroy 1993) as a site for imagining the production of diasporic space, alongside the critique that ‘by excluding Africa, Gilroy has in effect narrowed the Africanness or Africanity of the ‘Black Atlantic’ (Masilela 1996, p. 88). Through Diome’s novel, I explore how this intersects with a feminist project of rendering visible the spatialization of difference, through an engagement with the geographies of domination. Borrowing from Zymunt Bauman’s (2006) notion of liquid modernity, I therefore propose ‘liquid feminism’ as a framework that relates the globalised oceanic mobilities of African migrants to the structures of patriarchal domination which render black women’s lives ‘ungeographic’ (McKittrick 2006). I start by exploring the geographic sensibility of Diome’s poetics, including her use of the language of geography and her personification of the Atlantic Ocean. I then analyse how her portrayal of a geulwaar matriclan subverts the notion of Western feminism as rescuing African women who are trapped by ‘tradition’. Finally, I explore Diome’s notion of ‘geographic suicide’ as associated with the reflexivity of African women as modern subjects a site for the ‘affective mapping’ (Flatley 2009) of diasporic identity. Ultimately, the article illustrates how Diome’s feminist re-imagining of the black Atlantic centres Africa and Africanness, combating the temporal dislocation that fixes the continent as a space that is lost in the originary moment of rupture of the Middle Passage.

Modern African humans effecting Atlantic middle passes

ABSTRACT This essay challenges the traditional focus of the Black Atlantic on Anglophone-dominant movement and culture by prioritizing Afro-Francophone discussion, through a philosophical contextualization of Fatou Diome’s Le Ventre de L’Atlantique in conversation with Aminata Traoré’s Le Viol de L’Imaginaire. The essay offers an exploration of fugitivity or exile from colonially structured material conditions and lived experiences of unfreedom in African contexts, notions present in both narratives. After presenting and analyzing a key element of the encounter between Western human beings and African human be-ings, it considers a central element of Diome’s novel, in counterpart with a central theme of Traoré’s text. It explores the idea that the type of fugitivity that transpires in Diome’s novel, and the kind of exile of which Traoré speaks, can be understood as, in part, a result of a salient feature of the relationality between human beings and human be-ings. In that Diome’s Salie and Traoré tell their communities what they know about the West and how Africans really fare there, they break through community lies and ignorance that aid and abet – but do not, at the root, cause – the complex situation of capture and captivation that coerce or seduce Africa’s youth into varying states of fugitivity or exile. Both propose reimaging and rebuilding Africa for Africans – an endeavour requiring that African youth remain in Africa.

Some Perspectives on Overcoming Communication Challenges in the Selected Novels Fatou Diome, Gloria Naylor, Leonora Miano, Pamela Jooste and Walter Mosley

This article entitled “Some Perspectives on Overcoming Communication Challenges in the Selected Novels of Fatou Diome, Gloria Naylor, Leanora Miano, Pamela Jooste and Walter Mosley”, analyses both genetic and biological disparities from childhood that characterize the lives of boys and girls till adulthood in society. Thus, Le Ventre de l’Atlantique (Diome), The Women of Brewster Place (Naylor), Tels des astres éteints (Miano), Dance with a poor man’s Daughter (Jooste), and RL’s Dream (Mosley), motivated their use to raise an awareness campaigns on female conscientization against a male conspiracy built on the law of silence against the female gender, resulting in male marginalization, of women in gender relationships through diverse cultural and religious practices represented by the corpus. In order to achieve this goal, the following analytical tools were used: feminist criticism, post-colonialism and Africana Womanism. The hypothesis is based on the fact that the corpus underscores gender conflicts that rock power is exercised against women through the channel of communication by men. The analysis concluded that female consciousness raising is a tool that women use to counteract any form of subjugation in patriarchal societies that struggle to their emancipation and freedom. Consequently, the analysis highlights the philosophical and ideological vision that all five authors have of their respective African and African-American societies, concerning gender equality.

How to shape Black diasporic identity in France by reading (about) literature

This article gives an overview of francophone African diasporic websites such as Africultures.com, africavivre.com and other digital magazines, networks and blogs that are present on different platforms. Taking recent novels, texts of literary criticism, reviews and comments as examples, I analyse in what way they share in discourse about diasporic and migratory identity positions of Afropéens (‘Afropeans’) (and differ therein from other readings of the same novels). Methodologically, I draw on Stephen Greenblatt’s concepts of self-fashioning and circulation of social energy as well as on Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of the production of social capital. With respect to socially preformed discursive formation of Black people as an ostensibly homogeneous minority in the twenty-first century France, I refer to Pap Ndiaye’s ground-breaking study La condition noire from 2009 which closely analyses the complex situation of the Black migrant and post-migrant population. I focus on two narrative texts which are widely perceived both in France and on an international level: First, the autobiographically inspired novel Le Ventre de l’Atlantique (The Belly of the Atlantic) by Fatou Diome and second, Marie Ndiaye’s narrative triptych Trois femmes puissantes (Three Strong Women). Studying remarks and comments of literary criticism concerning these texts on francophone African diasporic websites, I raise the following questions: What relevance do these narrated characters (still) have today? To what extent do they shape the discourse of Black migrants in France? What kind of interpretation of the colonial history and context do they offer? And which emancipatory moments and decolonial strategies create a new, proper symbolic capital and, thus, add to the Imagined Community of ‘Noirs en France’ (‘Black people in France’)?

Ethnic Minority Women’s Writing in France: Publishing Practices and Identity Formation, 1998–2005. By Claire Mouflard

In this book Claire Mouflard analyses the interplay between texts, paratexts, and epitexts to investigate how minority women’s identity construction was negotiated alongside the ‘utopic notion of French multiculturalism’ (p. 17). The book’s tightly focused chronological scope and narrow consideration of autobiographical and autofictional works enables Mouflard’s comparative approach, which draws together works published in France by female authors of North African, sub-Saharan African, and Vietnamese descent. Pairing original research into publishers’ archival materials with more traditional literary and (para)textual analyses, the book illustrates how many of the authors it considers ‘were fashioned according to gendered and colonial marketing practices’ (p. 8). Above all, Mouflard’s female-centric comparative focus on both those positionalities explicitly cognized under the banner of French multiculturalism (especially the ‘Black-Blanc-Beur’ refrain) and those who sat ‘outside of the millennium’s reductive multicultural utopia’ (notably, Franco-Vietnamese authors; p. 17), adds much to French cultural studies, race and ethnicity studies, and discussions around twentieth- and twenty-first-century French publishing politics. After an Introduction and contextualizing first chapter, each chapter then focuses on works by several female authors belonging to — or categorized as — one minority positionality. In Chapter 2, Mouflard shows how the paratexts of works by three authors officially branded as ‘Beur’ (Samira Bellil, Nina Bouraoui, and Nora Hamdi) also implicitly think of the authors along a secondary axis: banlieue or intégrée. In Chapter 3, Mouflard focuses on the paratextual construction of ‘Black’ and ‘Afro-French’ identities through works by Calixthe Beyala, Bessora, and Fatou Diome. As in Chapter 2, Mouflard traces a range of identity constructions: from Beyala’s ‘tokenization’ to Bessora’s ‘global and multifaceted black identity’ and Diome’s strategic use of the ‘epitext’ (p. 9). Finally, in Chapter 4, the focus turns to a group conspicuously absent from the ‘Black-Blanc-Beur’ formulation: Franco-Vietnamese authors. Here, Mouflard shows how publishers’ paratextual strategies branded Anna Moï and Linda Lê as ‘near-French’ literature though not without Orientalist echoes (p. 117; my emphasis). Beyond analysing how (para)texts construct gendered minority identities, Mouflard also adds depth to existing studies of the politics of metropolitan publishers and their lists, such as Gallimard’s ‘Collection blanche’ or Éditions de l’Aube’s ‘Regards croisés’. Mouflard’s original research into publishing houses’ archival records, notably those of Albin Michel (publisher of Beyala) and Christian Bourgois (publisher for Lê) in Chapter 1, unquestionably furthers existing conversations about some of the better-known authors she studies and her close readings of individual paratexts — especially those examining works’ multiple editions — are engaging and persuasive. While more time might have been spent discussing whether and how this period marks a radical break from prior or later publishing trends and unpacking whether the conclusions drawn in each case are most attributable to individual publishers, editors, or to broader, even universal publishing practices, Mouflard’s book nevertheless constitutes an important contribution to contemporary French cultural and literary studies. Above all, readers curious about the literary construction and the packaging of female minority positionalities in France will discover much to interest them.

Biocentrism as Magical Realism, Realism and Hybrid Transculturation: Fatou Diome’s Innovative Fictionalization of Biocentric Characterization through Transnational Testimonials in Kétala

Fatou Diome’s writing constantly enriches and renews Francophone African literary production, especially in the realms of characterization, intertextuality, and transnationalism. Indeed, her work delineates the body and space in ways that expand the limits of this literary field further, thus making it more inclusive of our most intimate objects as characters along with non-African intertextual references. Her novel Kétala produces a creative form of narration that brings multiple voices and existential sensibilities in an effort to challenge any homogeneous conceptions and representations of identity, whether human or textual. This paper examines Diome’s enriching renewal of literary creativity through biocentrism as magic realism and through a hybrid transculturation that transcends continental borders. It argues that Diome carries out this innovative renewal by constructing a fantastic process of memorialization built around Kétala’s main female protagonist, Mémoria, and her lifelike experiences in national and transnational spaces, as well as her untimely death.

De quoi aimer vivre by Fatou Diome

Reviewed by: De quoi aimer vivre by Fatou Diome Rosemary Haskell Fatou Diome De quoi aimer vivre Paris. Editions Albin Michel. 2021. 240 pages. “AH, LOOK AT all the lonely people!” The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” refrain captures the essence of Senegalese writer Fatou Diome’s 2021 short-story collection De quoi aimer vivre (Enough to make us love life). It is peppered with characters on the edge of society, longing for human connection and fulfillment. Their lonely exclusion is frequently explained through their remembered pasts, while the book’s title unites the stories’ characters: we must all have something that makes us want to live. Bread alone is not enough. Disabled Andy, D. D. the washed-up boxer, divorced Octave, refugee Samira, the poor Senegalese fishing family: all frequent the typically Diomien liminal or marginal spaces, such as the café, the empty apartment, the mountain cabin, and the coastal fringe. Varying her trademark focus on the Black woman migrant, Diome still pursues her key themes of the quest for personal fulfillment and social integration. All but two of the stories are set in Europe, the exceptions returning us to Senegal with “La Marmite du Pêcheur” (The fisherman’s stewpot) and to the beloved navigator grandfather, represented here by “Le Vieil Homme sur la Barque” (The old man on the boat), a 2010 story. The two opening pieces stamp the collection’s identity. “Une Fenêtre pour les Anges I – Présence, II – Absence” (A window for angels: I – presence, II – absence) richly configure the fragile relationship between Andy, a disabled white French man and the Black Senegalese woman narrator, charting the ultimately successful achievement of unconventional friendship while illuminating Andy’s experiences of disability as he counters others’ repulsion with resilience and forgiveness. “Le Bleu de la Roya” (Roya’s blue) and “Le Vieil Homme sur la Barque” explore the figure of the man-savior: the Italian shepherd shelters the Libyan refugee, and the fisher-grandfather guides the little Senegalese girl—in the present and in memory. A welcome reprint of a 2002 story, “Ports de Folie” (Ports of madness), traces a woman’s obsessive dramatization of places where her absent lover is traveling. “Indémodable!” (Timeless), whose talking dress recalls the speaking objects of Diome’s novel Kétala, also enacts the longing for the absent beloved. De quoi aimer vivre reminds us of the strengths of Diome’s earliest work, the 1990 short-story collection La Préférence Nationale (National preference). This 2021 volume illustrates how the novelist flourishes within the story genre’s tighter formal framework. Rosemary Haskell Elon University Copyright © 2022 World Literature Today and the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma

Visiones de la inmigración subsahariana: causas y consecuencias en algunas novelas africanas del siglo XXI

Emigration is a very frequent phenomenon in West Africa. Southern Europe is a highly coveted destination for many African people willing to find fortune away from their home. This dream turns into a nightmare for irregular immigrants due to reasons such as the difficulties that they must overcome during their journey and, also, after their arrival arrive in Europe. Some women writers, like Fatou Diome, Oumou A. Traoré or Fatoumata F. Sidibé, denounce in their novels the causes and consequences of this intrepid adventure. This paper addresses the reasons and effects of sub-Saharan immigrations identified by Diome, Traoré and other African women writers.

Les étrangetés psychologiques et sociales chez Fatou Diome : des vecteurs d’une affirmation identitaire cosmopolite ?

This article analyses four works by Fatou Diome (La préférence nationale, 2001; Le ventre de lʼAtlantique, 2005; Impossible de grandir, 2013; Marianne porte plainte !, 2017) which thematically target the exile of narrator Salie, the author’s double. The aim is to order the abundant textual material through literary, sociological and anthropological notions, without ignoring the surplus of literature, which shows the way. The hypothesis will consist in revealing the didactic virtues of the pamphlet (2017), in contrast to fictional narratives that are not very performative. Methodologically, the analysis will go from the constellations of cosmopolitanism to an alternationalist education, through the figures of the foreigner and hospitality, and the question of identity.

Évolution des représentations de la diversité culturelle chez les auteurs africains de la migritude

This work aims at observing and compare the evolution of representations of cultural diversity among African authors over time. The investigation that focuses on works such as Kossi Efoui’s La fabrique de ceremonies; The Negro Grandsons of Vercingetorix by Alain Mabanckou and Le ventre de l’Atlantique by Fatou Diome, based on a sociocritical approach shows how the levels of representation of cultural diversity have evolved among authors of migration in conjunction with works published by African authors of negritude.

Postcolonial Narratives: Literature of Migritude

The article is dedicated to the history of migritude, a phenomenon that arose among the African intellectual emigration at the beginning of the 21st century. Its origin is associated with the name of the Kenyan writer of Indian origin Shailja Patel, the author of poetical show (2006) and the poem under the title “Migritude” (2010). As a result, a literary movement of the same name was formed, the bias of which is connected, on the one hand, with the renewal of the format of post-colonial narratives and their themes, and, on the other hand, with the tectonic changes that have taken place on the world stage in the context of globalization. The author of the article focuses on the ego-story of Shailja Patel and its transformation, primarily due to content, into the history of an entire generation living in the era, which coincided in time with the situations of postcoloniality and postmodernity. Addressing the issues of colonialism and post-colonialism, racism, segregation and migration is not new. Eventually women joined the discussion and set themselves the task of answering the question posed by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in her essay “Can Subaltern Speak?” They radically changed the range of topics proposed for discussion by addressing the ideas of gender equality and the fight against stereotypes, focusing on the problems of social and professional identity without regard to ethnicity and race. The article identifies a number of the most famous authors of migritude (Fatou Diome, Christina Ali Farah, Igiaba Scego, researchers of their works Augusta Irele and Ashna Ali, etc.) and the topics they refer to. Particular emphasis is placed on their interpretation of the problem of identity in the context of the strategy of interculturalism in conjunction with the processes of globalization, liberalization, democratization and digitalization. The author comes to the conclusion that in recent years the discursive field of migritude has been forming with its own borders (within the Diaspora) and practices (primarily adaptative), terminology, intellectual and social communities, activists and sympathizers. In conditions when migration has become a marker of the modern world order migritude has become a norm for them as an opportunity to realize a number of their most important intentions, including self-realization, obtaining a profession, and achieving success.

City Profile: Dakar

City Profile:Dakar J. R. Patterson (bio) Léopold Sédar Senghor The Collected Poems Trans. Melvin Dixon University of Virginia Press Mariama Bâ So Long a Letter Trans. Modupé Bodé-Thomas Waveland Press David Diop At Night All Blood Is Black Trans. Anna Moschovakis Farrar, Straus and Giroux Boubacar Boris Diop Doomi Golo—The Hidden Notebooks Trans. Vera Wülfing-Leckie & El Hadji Moustapha Diop Michigan State University Press Anna Badkhen Fisherman’s Blues: A West African Community at Sea Riverhead Books 2022 NEUSTADT PRIZE LAUREATE! Click for larger view View full resolution “AFRICAN RENAISSANCE MONUMENT” BY PENNSTATENEWS IS LICENSED UNDER CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 LIKE A PILLOW that has burst its seams, Dakar overflows with an excess of life. The resultant drift of people, goods, and animals through the city is a raucous cacophony of metal and flesh. Initiating it, it seems, are the shopkeepers, who, egged on by some madness, empty their stores to display their wares on the sidewalks, if not the street itself. Pedestrians and aimless livestock, thus displaced, wander itinerant through busy intersections as one would an open plain. Drivers take it all in stride, using this stricture as an opportunity to free themselves from the burdens of direction and signage. The result is a pandemonium of travel, a melee of feet, wheels, and hooves. The klaxon is the lingua franca, a beep available for every expression from “Here I am!” to “Whee! I’m driving!” to “I don’t brake for children.” The gumming of Dakar’s arterial flow can be overwhelming; if one finds the car horn one of the world’s lesser languages, it is downright oppressive. Above the fracas, on a scrubby hillock, rise the emblematic threesome of a beefy man, his zaftig wife, and their pointing babe: the African Renaissance Monument, the tallest statue on the continent. The North Korean–built monolith is either, depending on one’s view, an embodiment of African rebirth and self-empowerment or a vanity project and cash cow for former president Abdoulaye Wade. Either way, it is impressively large, an imposing image of a pert, muscular family. Cities are not only formed of their brutish reality but also the collective ideas of their residents. This is fortunate for Dakar, a cornucopia of ideas and vision, where literature plays an important characterizing role. The most famous character is undoubtedly Léopold Sédar Senghor, who, elected as independent Senegal’s first president in 1960, was an acclaimed poet before his political rise, a model of Mao’s pen-and-sword ideal of a ruler. On the opposing side, his political rival, historian Cheikh Anta Diop, wrote a litany of intellectual publications that gave rise to Pan-Africanism and “Diopian thought.” Their joint struggle against oppression made Dakar one of the cradles of Négritude. Though Senghor and Diop, like Cheikh Hamidou Kane, are authors of another time, their themes of displacement and rebirth have carried through to today. The 2021 International Booker Prize went to the French-Senegalese author David Diop and translator Anna Moschovakis for At Night All Blood Is Black, which follows a Senegalese man into the fracas of the Second World War. That war casts a surprisingly heavy shadow over western Africa; war-grave cemeteries are found throughout this part of the continent. Dakar’s—Bel Air Cemetery—is near the sea, half a mile from the Museum of Black Civilization. Another everlasting theme is the troubled relationship between France and Senegal, between Dakar and Paris; two large, powerful countries within their respective spheres of influence, inextricably linked through history and language. This bond marks the work of authors Fatou Diome and Ndèye Fatou Kane, and filmmaker Ous-mane Sembène. There are, of course, other languages; both indigenous and widely spoken: Wolof, Pulaar, Sere, and Diola, to name a few. Books in these languages are rare to nonexistent, though the established writer and 2022 Neustadt Prize laureate, Boubacar Boris Diop, for one, writes in Wolof. When moving about the city, avoid, if possible, the cacophony of Sicap-Liberté and Grand Yoff arrondissements, where zones like S.C.A.T. live up well to their acronym. Stick to...

Your Feet Will Lead You Where Your Heart Is / Le crépuscule des âmes sœurs edited by Dzekashu Macviban And Nfor E. Njinyoh

Reviewed by: Your Feet Will Lead You Where Your Heart Is / Le crépuscule des âmes sœurs ed. by Dzekashu Macviban and Nfor E. Njinyoh Dominic Thomas Your Feet Will Lead You Where Your Heart Is / Le crépuscule des âmes sœurs EDITED BY DZEKASHU MACVIBAN AND NFOR E. NJINYOH Bakwa Books, 2020. 430 pp. ISBN 9781733752626. This innovative bilingual anthology (English and French) of new Cameroonian writing, published in Yaounde, is all the more timely because of the recent polemic triggered by the choice of translators who, because of their identity, have been deemed incompatible with the project of translating the work of the American poet Amanda Gorman, selected to read at the presidential inauguration of Joe Biden. This controversy has opposed those for whom qualifications, skill, language competency, and cultural literacy are deemed of paramount importance and those who have raised issues and questions pertaining to the politics of literary translation. If the former are suspicious of essentializing writers and translators, reducing them and their work to questions of "identity," the latter bemoan the lack of diversity in the publishing industry and highlight examples of institutional and literary consecration that ignore systemic racism and the pernicious ways in which unconscious bias operates. These polarizing debates nevertheless underscore the importance of supporting measures that improve access to publishing, while fostering greater diversity in translation practices. To this end, the multilingual framework in the Republic of Cameroon is all the more compelling given that the two official languages—English and French—share a legacy and experience of colonial and [End Page 200] imperial rule and the fact that "the crisis currently rocking the country [stems] from issues of linguistic, cultural, and political identity and representation" (8). We cannot possibly seek to resolve all of these complex questions on this occasion, but this bilingual anthology offers a concrete example as to how a concerted and strategic effort to achieve greater inclusivity in creative engagements (writing and translation) can yield productive outcomes. As the editors underscore, "creative writing is, more often than not, likely to create empathy as recent studies have shown. Nevertheless, such empathy can only go so far as readers who can read the language in which the creative writing manifests itself. By recreating the essence of a work across languages, translation breaks linguistic barriers and gives us insight into the lives of others, thereby unveiling realities and conditions—shared or otherwise—that have the potential to be factors of rapprochement rather than rupture" (7). Translation is, as we know, concerned with conversion, transfer, and transformation, and this anthology is the outgrowth, the fruit of a remarkable collaborative project between Batwa Books (in Yaounde) and the University of Bristol, organized around a range of workshop and mentoring initiatives that brought into conversation a new generation of Cameroonian writers and translators and a project team composed of authors and pioneering scholars, as well as reputable international translators (of major authors such as Mwanza Mujila, Fatou Diome, Max Lobe, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Nii Ayikwei Parkes). The anthology weaves together disparate stories that end up delineating the contours of contemporary Cameroonian life, exemplifying the endless challenges and possibilities across rural and urban settings, while also framing issues in a broader framework that connects with the Cameroonian diaspora. Stories feature revolt and insurrection, education, incarceration, fatherless children, abandoned mothers, failing marriages, social customs and mores, the shadow of religion, superstition and witchcraft, attempted suicide, and the persistent stigma of AIDS. A particular ecosystem shapes the stories, with references to food, ceremonial and religious practices, proverbs, geography, and shifting linguistic registers. Narrators formulate social critiques, often through recourse to irony, and in many instances these are evidenced in the words or thoughts of those who live on the margins, the underprivileged who point to discrepancies between living standards, "the little people" who struggle at the hands of a corrupt and powerful elite. The authors demonstrate mastery of the short story as a literary genre, offering examples of subtle character development, awareness of setting, development of intrigue, attention to stylistics, compelling dialogue, while considering structure, and producing self-contained and enclosed stories in which catalysts are carefully inserted, introducing unexpected plot developments, all...