so long a letter by mariama ba pdf download

Since they state that their commitment to their Islamic faith encompasses a critical interrogation of traditional and religious practices within their own societies, I will draw on the term ' dihliz ', an Arabo Persian term, (Moosa 2006:7) which suggests a liminal, threshold space.

Due to their personal circumstances, both narrators find themselves in a personal space in where they are insiders as well as outsiders within their African Muslim nations. This paper suggests that women should join hands and use the power available to them if they are to overcome the challenges they all face.īoth So Long a Letter and Year of the Elephant were written in the aftermath of the struggle for liberation from colonial rule, articulating the visibility of women in traditional, patriarchal African-Muslim contexts at a time when personal and socio/political exposés by women writers were quite uncommon.These first generation novellas, situated within the former French colonies Senegal and Morocco respectively, are articulations of agency which move both within and across borders and boundaries. 1 It focuses on :female-female' relations mediated by age, generation, education, exposure, and experience, in order to understand the complexities of patriarchal oppression and to contribute to the debate on the nature of patriarchy and its role in the oppression of women in African societies. which generally emphasizes 'male-female' relations of oppression as an ideal way of understanding male dominance and female subordination. Thus, this study differs from conventional feminist research. The focus is on elderly women who, often times, are so ignorant, self ish and manipulative that they make life hard for other women. However, a close reading of texts by some African women writers like Mariama Bd, provides a critique of this standpoint, and examines the direct and indirect roles played by some women in the sustenance and perpetuation of patriarchal oppression. Mainstream feminist scholarship allributes the dominance of patriarchal ideology in African society to the activities of men, while regarding women as innocent victims of patriarchal authority.

So long a letter by mariama ba pdf download