African literature in modern contexts

¶ … Mariama Ba's So Long A Letter. It discusses how the style used by the author hinders her presentation of the whole question of male/female relationships within the entire family structure, not just the nuclear family. It also discusses how the reader only has the main character's opinion and not those of the characters around her. Two sources used. APA.

So Long A Letter

Mariama Ba in her novel, "So Long A Letter," gives the audience a glimpse into the Islamic world. The book is written as a letter from the main character, Ramatoulaye, to her childhood friend, Aissatou. It is both a missive and lamentation of Ramatoulaye's life, more than half a century of years. She has reached a cross-road, and as one might retrace his route on a map if lost, she retraces her feelings and experiences that have brought her this far on her journey (Ba 1996). Her husband of twenty-odd years has died. However, it has only been a short time since he sent word to her that he had taken a new wife, a mere girl, a friend of their daughter's. Ramatoulaye's indignation of the marriage turns to sympathy for the young widow. Through the journal, the audience learns of her feelings and experiences as a single mother coping with first abandonment and then widowhood (Johnson 1999).

Ba's chosen style of writing only adds to the isolation and seclusion of the character's perspective. From the very first page we are wrapped in Ramatoulaye's essence. These are indeed private thoughts and perhaps resemble more a dairy than journal (Johnson 1999). We are given access to the other characters only through her eyes. From the beginning of the first chapter when she is at the bedside of her dead husband, everything and everyone is seen through the filter of Ramatoulaye's heart and memory (Ba 1996).

Events that happen around her and in her life can only be shared through her personal dialog within the context of the letter. When Ramatoulaye's teenaged daughter tells of her unwelcomed pregnancy, we only know how Ramatoulaye feels,

Remembering, like a lifebuoy, the tender and consoling attitude of my daughter... I overcame my emotion.... The umbilical cord took on new life, the indestructible bond beneath the avalanche of storms and the duration of time. I saw her once more, newly sprung from me.... The life that fluttered in her was questioning me" (Ba 1996).

Aissatou left her husband rather than stay with him when he married another. Although it is not forbidden in their culture, more than one wife is not considered the chosen way (Ba 1996). Through Ramatoulaye's memory, we learn of Aissatou's feelings regarding her husband decision to take a new wife. In a letter to her husband, Aissatou writes, "I cannot accept what you are offering me today in place of the happiness we once had" (Ba 1996). Not only is the novel written in letter form, but letters seem to play a theme throughout the story. Letters are seen as separation as well as communication. Ramatoulaye's husband was dictating a letter when he had his heart attack (Ba 1996).

Her memory serves her well, however, Ramatoulaye's fate of living her particular culture of seclusion gives way to the limitations of her presentation of an objective perspective of male and female relationships (Ba 1996). The readers gain insight into relationships through events and memories, not first person accounts. Ba breathes life into her figures amid a landscape of post-colonial Africa and the political turmoil and self-identity crisises that males and females alike endured (Ba 1996).