Selfish Gifts: Senegalese Women's Autobiographical Discourses (review)

Selfish Gifts: Senegalese Women's Autobiographical Discourses, by Lisa McNee. Albany: State University of New York P, 2000. 198 pp. ISBN 0-7914-4588-7 paper.

Selfish Gifts is an original contribution to the critical debate about identity and self-representation. It offers a insightful exploration of Senegalese women's discourse focusing on autobiography, widened to include not only written autobiographies but also oral performances such as panegyric taasu, the songs of praise performed mainly by Senegalese women during all kinds of formal and informal meetings. From a literary perspective, Selfish Gifts is a gallant attempt by the author to contextualize the production of knowledge and to enlarge literary preoccupations with orality and performing arts.

The author's extended stay in Senegal and her knowledge of Wolof provided the ideal means to listen to, engage with, and record taasu performers. The materials thus presented in Wolof transcription and English translation will definitely be of major interest to a wide range of scholars interested in Senegalese women's writing discourse. Panegyric songs and dances cut across social hierarchies and traditional social activities, and every chapter of Selfish Gifts offers the analysis of a number of taasu, situating them in the context of their performance. Taasu can praise a patron and her family (pp. 69-72); they can teach a lesson to a parent "who takes a crooked path" (37); they can reflect political issues and self-referential angst—"Oh, Mauritania, I will not go there to die" (134-36)—or express personal loss in an allegoric way: "Leroi, don't you know about my fire? I lost so much" (50-55). But most important, they reflect the fact that Wolof literary tradition—and indeed the whole of traditional Senegalese values—is based on the belief that "investments in relationship are safer than investments in objects" (31). It may seem paradoxical that in acknowledging a simple a fact such as this, Selfish Gifts breaks new ground, yet it does, shifting the focus of literary endeavor from the product to the performance, from the artifact to its sociocultural function and aesthetic value. Taasu have no intrinsic value outside "the ring" of participants, the author suggests; it can "only be received if one gives" (78). Furthermore, it is self-reflective and in praising others it also aims partly at self-praise.

In contrast to the oral materials collected, the choice of fiction and written autobiographical texts is somehow wanting; the author says little of the vibrant Senegalese autobiographical writing of today and falls back on the "old" canonic authors: Sadji, Ken Bugul, Nafissatou Diallo, Amina Mbaye, etc. Furthermore, some outstanding Senegalese female personalities, such as Annette Mbaye d'Erneville or Lilyan Kesteloot, have been overlooked in the analysis, whereas a plethora of marginally relevant works have been included. These limitations, however, are of limited importance given the fact that the study is not attempting a comprehensive bibliographical analysis of contemporary autobiographical writing but rather aims at debunking the colonialist trope of "primitive orality" based on a "Great Divide" (10) between oral and written material. On the basis of some examples, Selfish Gifts shows that "there is an unbroken continuity in African verbal art forms, from interacting oral genres to such literary productions as the novel and poetry" (10).

Another interesting feature of the book is the author's attempt to engage in a meaningful and lively exchange, both with the people studied and her readers. "The inverted image of the Other that we see in another's gaze is really our own" (148) she says, quoting Fanon, and "we can only learn about the Other by becoming strangers to ourselves" (148). However, this does not mean we can, or indeed should, forget who we are. Rather then attempting to assimilate and erase differences, she suggests, the time has come to develop forms of new cultural dialogue that are not based on possession, but on sharing multiple perspectives.

In summary,Selfish Gifts is...