University of Connecticut OpenCommons@UConn Doctoral Dissertations University of Connecticut Graduate School 8-8-2014 Writing About Writing: African Women's Epistolary Narratives Suzanne Marie Ondrus The University of Connecticut, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations Recommended Citation Ondrus, Suzanne Marie, "Writing About Writing: African Women's Epistolary Narratives" (2014). Doctoral Dissertations. 493. https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations/493 Writing About Writing: African Women’s Epistolary Narratives Suzanne Marie Ondrus, PhD University of Connecticut, [2014] This dissertation examines the following six Anglophone and Francophone African diasporic novels: So Long a Letter ( Une si longue lettre ) by Mariama Bâ (Senegalese), Juletane by Myriam Warner-Vieyra (fifty-year resident of Senegal, originally from Guadeloupe), Imagine This by Sade Adeniran (Nigerian living in the U.K.), Going Solo and To a Young Woman by Hope Keshubi (Ugandan), and Zenzele: A Letter for my Daughter by J. Nozipo Maraire (Zimbabwean living in the U.S.). This dissertation argues that the detailed characterization of the writing narrators cultivates intimacy, making these works worthy of serious literary consideration. Starting from book reviews’ emotional engagement with these texts, it points out literary techniques that create engagement with the writerly narrators. This study examines how the writing characters convey both intellectual and emotional intimacy through their writerly dispositions and their literary techniques such as similes, proverbs, metaphors, images, and literary allusions. H. Porter Abbott’s techniques of writing mimesis , Robyn Warhol’s work on intimacy with the second person address, Joe Bray’s epistolary techniques of representation of consciousness, and cognitive scientist Keith Oatley’s concept of literature as simulation contribute to technique analysis. The women writing characters examine present political and social issues that are roadblocks for women in their societies, such as unjust inheritance laws and traditions in Uganda; AIDS in Uganda; child abuse in Nigeria; braindrain and materialism in Zimbabwe; literacy in West Africa; and discriminatory treatment of the mentally ill in West Africa. Chronicles of African epistolary history and African female writing characters are given. Writing About Writing: African Women’s Epistolary Narratives Suzanne Marie Ondrus B.A. Wells College, 1997 M.A. Binghamton University, 2002 M.F.A. Bowling Green State University 2006 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut 2014 Copyright by Suzanne Marie Ondrus [2014] APPROVAL PAGE Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation Writing About Writing: African Women’s Epistolary Narratives Presented by Suzanne Marie Ondrus, B.A., M.A., M.F.A. Major Advisor __________________________________________________________________ Patrick Colm Hogan AssociateAdvisor________________________________________________________________ Lucy McNeece AssociateAdvisor________________________________________________________________ Robert Tilton University of Connecticut 2014 i Acknowledgements: I wish to thank foremost my family, those with us and those remaining in the spark of the fire: Mary Ann Leonard, Tom Ondrus, Louis Goldbach, Christina Ondrus, and Raymond Di Carlo. For inspiration: Dianne Ritchey, Narorn Seibert, Naminata Diabate, Ellen Mc Hugh, Bob Coughlin, Angela Weaver, Tom Hyland, Professor Ali Benali, Professor Coulibaly, and Waltraut Deinert. Eckhard Breitinger, Berndth Lindfors, and Dr. Okaka for help and encouragement with Ugandan literature. Thanks to Elizabeth Mahen for help with my proposals for research in Uganda. A big thanks to all my sisters at FEMRITE, especially Hilda Twongyeirwe, Goretti Kyomuhendo, Susan Kiguli, and Margret Katwesige. Professor Patrick Hogan, I would not have even arrived at this point without your support! Thank you for believing in me and for helping to shape this project; you are a great source of inspiration. Professor McNeece, thank you for your insightful perspectives, encouragement, and ideas for research after this project. Professor Tilton, thank you very much for your attention to the fine details and enthusiasm for my work in this genre. Much appreciation to second readers Professor Turcotte and Professor Cutter. Finally, Camille N. Badini, thank you for understanding the value of this journey to me. An earlier version of part of chapter one was published as “Critics’ Marginalization of Zenzele: a Letter for My Daughter and Imagine This through Autobiographical Inferences” in Autofiction Journal. 1.1 (2013): 83-98. An earlier version of part of chapter three was published as “Slaps at Dignity: Hope Keshubi and Women Writers’ Reception in Uganda” in Research in African Literatures 44.4 (2013): 123-144. An earlier version of part of chapter four was published as “Childhood Creative Writing as Survival Space in Sade Adeniran’s Imagine This ” in African Youth in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture: Identity Quest New York: Routledge, 2014, 35-52. I am grateful to these publishers for permission to reprint. ii Introduction 1 Chapter One 13 Critics’ Limits: Reading Epistolaries as Testimony Chapter Two 37 The Source of the Tradition: Mariama Bâ ’s Une si longue lettre Chapter Three 73 Hope Keshubi: Healing and AIDS Prevention Chapter Four 138 Sade Adeniran’s Intimacy and Survival in Imagined Friends Chapter Five 180 J. Nozipo Maraire’s Zenzele : A Mother’s Challenge Chapter Six 229 Myriam Warner-Vieyra’s Juletane: Rage in a Self-Reflective Narrative Conclusion: Transporting Readers with Gradations of Writing Characters 260 Appendix: Further African Epistolaries 265 Works Cited 271 iii Introduction: Background & Context to Project This project has its roots in a question asked years ago before I knew my specialty would be African literature. In 2005 I studied African literature in Burkina Faso with Université d’Ougadougou professor Roger Coulibaly. While discussing Mariama Bâ’s epistolary text, Une si longue lettre, he asked, “what do African women need in order to write?” Writing space, time, resources, female writer role models, publishers, and an audience were some responses. This question addressed both African female authors and African female writing characters; it engaged both the real world, as well as the creative world. I continued to think about Coulibaly’s question during the course of my graduate studies in comparative cultural and literary studies. The proclamation that Africa’s greatest loss is its loss of imagination, stated by film director Jean Pierre Bekolo, also contributed to this project’s conception. Where was women’s imagination alive and how? How could women writers mold female writing characters into role models for social and political change? What power is there in vicariously experiencing someone’s imagination through writing characters? Can emotionally engaging texts that provide access to the intimate sphere of creation, intellect and sentiment, produce change in readers and thereby possibly change society? In asking these questions, I felt first person narrators provided answers with their replication of intimate mental, creative, and emotional access. I found the epistolary genre (fiction in the form of letters) merged first person narrators and writing characters, permitting intimate acess to the aforementioned questions pertaining to African women writers. 1 Epistolaries, which are written in first person, replicate the heart, mind, and creative spirit, enabling one to actually experience the narrator’s experience. 1 Note, not all epistolary novels use first person narration; however, the novels I selected for study do. 1 As early as 1979, Mariama Bâ’s epistolary text Une si longue lettre featured a female writing character. Her text is now canonical in Africa literature, having won the prestigious Noma Award in 1980. I foresee her text as constituting the foundation for African female writing characters. In surveying African literature I find few female writing characters; most are in novels by Calixthe Beyala, Ama Ata Aidoo, Werere Liking, Veronique Tadjo, and Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond. 2 While there were African epistolary novels published before Bâ’s text, none reached near her text’s level of recognition or acclaim. 3 This genre’s key precursor is Bâ, hence her inclusion in this dissertation. Outside of articles on the female writing narrator in Bâ’s text, there are no academic articles on African female writer characters. Also, there are no articles on the unique genre of African epistolaries, aside from those on Bâ’s text; hence, African female writing characters and African epistolaries are areas in need of scholarship, and this dissertation 2 This categorization of female writing characters includes novels that have any mention of a female character writing, as well as novels with a writer as a primary protagonist; it also includes male authors writing about African female writing characters. The African female writing character trajectory emerged from mere scenes of women characters writing and now features women writers as characters whose prime action is writing. Calixthe Beyala’s C'est le soleil qui m'a brûlée (1987) ( The Sun Hath Looked Upon Me ,1996) includes a few brief scenes of the female protagonist’s desire to write, her acts of writing, and her imagination. Agaat (2004) by Marlene