Mariama Bâ

Mariama Ba (1929-1981) was a Senegalese author and feminist, who wrote in French. Born in Dakar, she was raised a Muslim, but at an early age came to critique what she perceived as inequalities between the sexes resulting from African and Islamic traditions. Raised by her traditional grandparents, she had to struggle even to gain an education, because they did not believe that girls should be taught. Ba later married a Senegalese member of Parliament, Obèye Diop, but divorced him and was left to care for their nine children.

Her frustration with the fate of African women—as well as her ultimate acceptance of it—is expressed in her first novel, So Long a Letter. In it she depicts the sorrow and resignation of a woman who must share the mourning for her late husband with his second, younger wife. This short book was awarded the first Noma Prize for Publishing in Africa in 1980. Ba died a year later after a protracted illness, before her second novel, Scarlet Song was published.