Like all good literature, Mariama Bâ's writings constitute social texts that renew themselves with each younger generation, each different society, and each new awareness because they are constantly interrogated, subverted, and primed with new meanings. Like the proverbial phoenix, therefore, Mariama Bâ and her fiction rise again and again from their own ashes.

This volumes is inspired by and celebrates the life and art of Mariama Bâ, winner of the first Noma Prize for publishing in Africa. Bâ's writings bears testimony to their status, depth, and canonical dimensions. There is practically no school curriculum in the United States that does not feature Bâ's texts either in the original French version of in the English translation.

The insightful and thoughtful essays that make up this collection represent a fascinating spectrum of up-to-the-minute readings, with the most recent methodologies, by a variety of scholars in African literature who do not belong to any one school of criticism, age, occupation, race or nationality. They include such scholars as Jean-Marie Volet, Obioma Nnaemeka, Omofolabo Ajayi, Mary Jane Androne, Lillian Corti, Ada Uzoamaka Azodo, Georges Joseph, Igolima Amachree, and Keith L. Walker. Also included as Harrell-Bond's famous and often-quoted interview with Mariama Bâ, translated into English by Olivia Jamin, not to mention Mariama Bâ's lone essay, "The Political Functions of Written African Literatures."

Ada Uzoamaka Azodo has a joint appointment in the Departments of Modern Languages, Minority Studies and Women's Studies Indiana University Northwest at Gary. He is the author of L'imaginaire dans les romans de Camara Laye and co-editor of Emerging Perspectives on Ama Ata Aidoo (Africa World Press, 1999). She has also published articles on francophone and anglophone Africa in a variety of scholarly journals, including Mots Pluriels, Journal of Religion in Africa, New York Feminist Press, Research in African Literatures,and Palabres.

CATEGORIES:

Literary Criticism, AFRICA