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How Mariama Bâ Became World Literature: Translation and the Legibility of Feminist Critique

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Tobias Warner
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Abstract

How did Mariama Bâ‘s 1979 novel Une si longue lettre (So Long a Letter) become one of the most widely read, taught, and translated African texts of the twentieth century? This essay traces how the Senegalese author's work became recognizable to a global audience as an attack on polygamy and a celebration of literary culture. I explore the flaws in these two conceptions of the novel, and I recover aspects of the text that were obscured along the way—especially the novel's critique of efforts to reform the legal framework of marriage in Senegal. I also compare striking shifts that occur in two key translations: the English edition that helped catalyze Bâ‘s success and a more recent translation into Wolof, the most widely spoken language in Senegal. By reading Letter back through these translations, I reposition it as a text that highlights its distance from an audience and transforms this distance into an animating contradiction.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 131 , Issue 5: Special Topic: Literature in the World , October 2016 , pp. 1239 - 1255
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2016

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