Tradition and Modernity Are Here to Stay: An Analysis of Francophone African Women's Writings Published in 1997-98

For the reader interested in francophone African women's writing, it is rare to come across more than one or two novelties at any one time. Thus, the many literary texts published in 1997 and early 1998 (with new titles still coming in ¹) may be seen as being the result of an unusually good couple of years; alternatively, it could suggest a shift in African publishing. But whatever the reason, the unusual number of books published in quick succession in 1997 and 1998 provides an expanded body of work allowing critics to take stock of francophone women's writing before the end of the millennium. The time has come to look beyond the canon of the seventies and eighties, buttressed by a trickle of works published in the early nineties, and to open a new chapter in which new books, new approaches, and new ideas can lead to a reappraisal of contemporary African women's writing.

Of course it is somewhat unreasonable to believe that an analysis of this mini-corpus could permit broad generalizations about francophone women's writing. It does not. Yet it is fair to suggest that the critic reading these novels in quick succession gets the impression that the overall picture gained through her/his reading of the novels provides a new and often conflicting vision of African women's life in the late nineties. Furthermore, paratextual and epitextual elements provide ample opportunities to enlarge the scope of the analysis. For example, the time separating the writing of the texts from their publication tells of the arduous road to the printed word experienced by some authors. It also indicates that more than twenty years of writing are compressed into two years of publication, giving this corpus a time span that far exceeds the narrow limits of its publishing dates. For example, it is amazing to note that L'ombre en feu (The shadow on fire) by Mame Younousse Dieng was accepted for publication in 1976 but was only to see the light of day some twenty years later. One can only guess what influence this novel would have had on African women's writing in the mid 1970s had it been published then. The point is that it was not and its late publication gives it an ambiguous temporal location at the intersection of the author's lament for having had to wait so long and the reader's enthusiasm at discovering an exceptional literary gem: one that escaped critical analysis for so long. Regina Yaou's Le prix de la révolte (The price of rebellion) and Assamala Amoi's Appelez-moi Bijou (Call me Bijou) are two other books that have been a long time coming, since both authors had already mentioned their manuscripts in letters addressed to the author of this article in the early 1990s. There is no such time gap in the case of Mame Bassine Niang's autobiography Mémoires pour mon père (Memories for my father) written a few years after the author's father passed away in 1993, nor for La petite fille du réverbère (The small girl by the street lamp) by Calixthe Beyala, which refers directly to the fiery reception given to her previous books by critics and journalists in the mid/late 1990s; possibly also for Rebelle (Rebel) by Fatou Keïta, Le chant des ténèbres (The song of shadows) by Fama Diagne Sène (this latter book having been awarded Senegal's prestigious Président de la république/President of the Republic literary prize), Aminata Sow Fall's sixth novel Douceurs du bercail (Home sweet home), and Abibatou Traoré's first publication, Sidagamie. As for the short stories edited by David Boris Diop and Hélène Bezençon under the...