Looking Back at 65 Years of Central African Women's Writing in French

African women have been contributing to literature since the beginning of humankind although scholarly research in a number of different disciplines in the humanities tends to give the impression that African literature in general is a development of the 20^th century. Publication dates of texts written in Western literary genres have too commonly been cited in histories of national literatures, especially when attempting to point to a "beginning." In doing so, this effectively amounts to erasing from memory oral literatures that have been produced for centuries prior. Thus, in this special issue about Francophone women writers of Central Africa, it should be clear that we are discussing published literary production but acknowledge with great respect the oralities of this same region and often times, the contributors to this volume have proven that the printed texts they have analyzed have been influenced by rich oral traditions. Within the patriarchal context that we are reading works by African women writers, we should never forget, as Metka Zupančič reminds us, "combien la pensée mythique au féminin pouvait avoir de poids dans le passé" (12).

Even when speaking of written texts, however, we cannot emphasize enough that African authors—women especially—have often struggled to get their voices officially in print with the result being that that we sadly have no published record of many voices. Discoveries of lost or forgotten manuscripts are still possible, a reality that can potentially rewrite literary histories of certain countries.

And to speak of "countries" is yet another complicated issue when discussing women writers of Central Africa since the borders defining today's nation-states were not drawn up by Africans themselves. Colonization meant that ethnic groups and even families were divided and scattered across two or more countries, a fact that puts into question the legitimacy of the colonial borders that we still recognize today. Irène Assiba d'Almeida encountered a similar dilemma in finalizing her project leading to an anthology of women's poetry of Francophone Africa entitled A Rain of Words. She explains in her introduction that she "resisted the temptation to classify the poets by country," pointing out that "these contemporary nation-states are of course not indigenous, but remains of colonial configurations" (xxv). Assiba d'Almeida's words indeed had an impact on determining how to organize this volume.

The Francophone nations that are represented in this special issue are Cameroon, the Central African Republic (CAR), Congo-Brazzaville, Congo-Kinshasa (also known as the DRC), Gabon, and Chad. There are essays in this volume covering all of these countries except for Chad. I have also taken the liberty of adding Rwanda (which technically does not fall under the United Nations subregion classifications for Central Africa) since it shares a border with the DRC and because author Scholastique Mukasonga has been so prolific, publishing several novels in French.

The failure to obtain an essay on Chadian women's writing is undoubtedly due to the fact that Chad has just one published female novelist to date: Marie-Christine Koundja, a career diplomat whose first novel, Al-Istifakh, ou, l'idylle de mes amis, was published in 2001 (Taroum 48). The first texts written by women in Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa typically appeared between 1960 and 1980 so Koundja's publication comes very late when considering the emergence of works by her peers in surrounding African countries. Koundja's second novel, Kam-Ndjaha, la dévoreuse, appeared in 2009 but apart from these two works, there is little or nothing being published out of Chad even though we can conclude that manuscripts by Chadian women most certainly exist. I therefore cite Koundja's texts to include Chad—even if in a symbolic way—in this discussion about female authors of Central Africa and it is my hope that this reference will spark more of an interest in discovering and researching Chadian women and their literature—oral or written.

The motivation for this special issue on the Francophone woman writer of Central Africa actually stems from my days as a doctoral candidate in...