Books by Mariama Bâ

So Long a Letter

Mariama Bâ

Newly widowed, the Senegalese schoolteacher Ramatoulaye writes a long letter to her lifelong friend Aissatou, taking stock of her marriage, her husband's taking of a young second wife, and the choices open to educated women in post-independence Senegal. Mariama Bâ's landmark of African women's writing is set in the real Dakar: the widow's house through the confinement of mourning, the mosque and the rites, the schools where the two women trained as pioneers, and the wider world Aissatou escapes to.

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