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More About This Textbook
Overview
The subject of intense admiration--and not a little shock, when it was first published-- The Abandoned Baobab has consistently captivated readers ever since. The book has been translated into numerous languages and was chosen by QBR Black Book Review as one of Africa’s 100 best books of the twentieth century. No African woman had ever been so frank, in an autobiography, or written so poignantly, about the intimate details of her life--a distinction that, more than two decades later, still holds true.
Abandoned by her mother and sent to live with relatives in Dakar, the author tells of being educated in the French colonial school system, where she comes gradually to feel alienated from her family and Muslim upbringing, growing enamored with the West. Academic success gives her the opportunity to study in Belgium, which she looks upon as a "promised land." There she is objectified as an exotic creature, however, and she descends into promiscuity, alcohol and drug abuse, and, eventually, prostitution. (It was out of concern on her editor’s part about her candor that the author used the pseudonym Ken Bugul, the Wolof phrase for "the person no one wants.") Her return to Senegal, which concludes the book, presents her with a past she cannot reenter, a painful but necessary realization as she begins to create a new life there.
As Norman Rush wrote in the New York Times Book Review, "One comes away from The Abandoned Baobab reluctant to take leave of a brave, sympathetic, and resilient woman." Despite its unflinching look at our darkest impulses, and at the stark facts of being a colonized African, the book is ultimately inspirational, for it exposes us to a remarkable sensibility and a hard-won understanding of one’s place in the world.
CARAF Books: Caribbean and African Literature Translated from French
University of Virginia Press
Editorial Reviews
Booklist
"This is a beautiful, tragic book.... We should be grateful that Ken Bugul found her way back at last to Africa and that she created this searing document as testimony of her suffering.
Ms.
"Bugul has written a powerful account of growing up female, black, and colonized. This book is feminist, furious, and unforgettable.
Ms.
Bugul has written a powerful account of growing up female, black, and colonized. This book is feminist, furious, and unforgettable.Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
In a wise, stirring, fresh and lyrical account, superbly translated, Ken Bugul (pseudonym of Marietou M'Baye) describes the pain and confusion of growing up in a West African country where residual French colonial influences disrupt her family life and make her feel a stranger among her own people. Memories of playing ``underneath an immense baobab tree, across from the family house'' in her village disappear when young Ken is sent to board with an aunt in town so she can attend the French high school nearby. Angry at her mother's abandonment and eager to go abroad, Ken accepts a government scholarship to study at an institution of higher learning in Belgium. Though she tries to make herself feel at home in Brussels, associating primarily with whites, loneliness and cultural isolation start her on a terrifying journey of self-discovery. Eventually, Bugul's yearning for a ``mother's lap, a place to rest her head'' draws her back to Senegal, even though she knows she cannot regain her ``lost childhood.'' (Dec.)Library Journal
Using a pseudonym meaning ``the person no one wants,'' a Senegalese woman writes a vivid, painful account of her childhood under French colonialism and escape as a student, at 20, to Belgium. Abandoned by her mother at age 5, ignored by her Muslim father, she is an orphan in her own family. She mimics European dress and attitudes, finally leaving for Belgium in the hope of finding acceptance because her colonial instructors taught her that the Gauls were her true ancestors. Instead, she finds she is an exotic, desired object, subject to the eternal refrain,``In your country, ah, the Blacks!'' Alone in an alien landscape, she begins a suicidal slide into alcohol, drugs, and prostitution. But a tragi-comic encounter with a white ``customer'' is the catalyst for a rebirth that brings her full circle to the baobab tree, the recurring symbol of her childhood. Recommended for black history and women's collections.-- Lenore Hart, Machipongo, Va.Product Details
Meet the Author
Ken Bugul is the pen name of Mariètou M’Baye. She is also the author of five subsequent books, among them Riwan ou le chemin de sable (Riwan or the Sandy Track), for which she received the Grand prix littéraire de l’Afrique noire. She is former head of the African region section of the International Planned Parenthood Federation.
University of Virginia Press