Mariama Bâ has created a brilliant literary work that resonates in the reader for a long time.

In a long letter to her best friend, she writtes about her life and the lives of the women in her family and friendships.
She depictes the motivations and aspirations for their actions and shows on one side, the daily struggle between old traditions and modern equality values; on the other side, the injustice, pain, resentment and cowardice that polygamy and cast thinking bring into their lives.

At the end of her letter, the writter laments how women are often oppressed by men, supported by religion, tradition or legislation. She pleads for love in form of an open, honest communication and equal treatment between both sexes. Written in 1980, this book is still as relevant as it was then. ( )

Update 9th Aug 2021:

Some years since I last read this book, still a great book and more than deserving of its place as an African and feminist classic. Reading through my initial review after this long I couldn't help but cringe and wince at certain points. I was certainly co-optative in certain ways as I used some ideas from this book to try and resolve the conflicts I had been dealing with at the time I read this, and was tempted to remove it in favour of a new review altogether. But then I thought that it is very possible that I might also want to write another review to replace that one if I ever re-read this again in the future, constant self-editing and obsessing does nothing but stagnate. That said as I leave this part as an update, reading through this was as wonderful as I remembered. And that last quote remains as brilliant as I first read it: "The word 'happiness' does indeed have meaning, doesn't it? I shall go out in search of it."

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What does one do when one feels the pressure of culture and religion weighing down on you? How does one find solace?

Ramatoulaye, writes a long letter to her friend Aissatou, reminding her (and herself) of their maiden days, married days, of their shared joys and pains while narrating her own troubles and triumphs.

The recounting of Ramatoulaye's journey to healing and liberation is nothing less than moving. Faced with the humiliation of her husband's betrayal by finding another wife, she remains bold and doesn't bend nor bow to anyone's demands.

"To overcome my bitterness, I think of human destiny. Each life has it's share of heroism, an obscure heroism, born of abdication, of renunciation and acceptance under the merciless whip of fate."

Mariama Bâ also brings an important issue, to which as an African and a gay individual I can relate to. Can modernism and culture blend and co-exist? Can we learn from different cultures other than our own and still keep our own intact? Can one still be proud of one's culture when they go against some of the norms and preconceived notions of what a woman's place is in the society?
She answers the question in only the profound and wise manner that echoes throughout her short but thorough book: "To lift us out of the bog of tradition, superstition and custom, to make us appreciate a multitude of civilizations without renouncing our own, to raise our vision of the world, cultivate our personalities, strengthen our qualities, to make up our inadequacies, to develop universal moral values in us..."

Mariama arises as a powerful voice challenging, demanding. A rare voice in African literature in the 80s, a period when not many women in the African landscape were asking as many questions or questioning the position of the African woman in both society and politics.
From describing beautiful sceneries of their youth to Ramatoulaye's day-to-day activities as a single mother, Mariama Bâ constructs a beautiful setting of pre and post independence Senegal, with all it's problems, hopes, conflict, culture, beauty and all in a 90 page book, exquisitely written. ( )

This is a classic that I have seen on so many Women in Translation lists. So when I saw a used copy at my local bookstore I had to snatch it up.

This functions as a snapshot of a society in flux. Ramatoulaye has recently been widowed, and is writing a long letter to her best friend from her school days. The letter recounts how she got to hear: Ramatoulaye and her friend were among the first generation of girls to pursue education past grade school as their country modernizes after gaining its independence. Both women were educated for professions, both worked and also married, and both of their husbands later took a second wife down the line. But Ramatoulaye's friend took her children and left when the second marriage happened, while she herself stayed.

This book depicts a startling amount of empathy and understanding on all sides, for all the players in these dramas and why they made the choices that they did. This was very satisfying on a level of peeking into a different society level, less satisfying on a emotional level. Ramatoulaye came off a little too perfect and long-suffering to me. Where was her anger? Her fight? She does stand up for herself in important ways, here. But I definitely left this book thinking BRING ON THE QUEERS. Between this and The House of the Spirits, I just need a little break from men being terrible to women.

(I have a whole lot of thoughts, actually, about the abundance of "men being terrible to women" in Women in Translation, but this is not the time.) ( )

So Long a Letter is an epistolary novel and semiautobiographical. It is a series of letters by Ramatoulaye Fall to her lifelong friend, Aissatou. Both women are betrayed by their husbands, who take second wives, but they respond in very different ways. This is a gentle novel, not forceful like Emecheta's The Joys of Motherhood or as anti-Colonial as Nervous Conditions. Instead the reader is brought into Ramatoulaye's personal space as though these intimate letters are addressed to us, and we are invited to understand her perspective even if, like Aissatou, we would have chosen to act differently. I very much enjoyed this short novel and wish that Bâ had been able to continue writing (she died at age 52, shortly after her second work was published). So Long a Letter won the Noma Award for best novel published in Africa in 1980. ( )

3.5 ( )