The Abandoned Baobab: The Autobiography of a Senegalese Woman

Ken Bugul. the protagonist and pseudonym of Mariétou M'Baye, a Senegalese author born in 1947, chronicles her coming of age in the late 1960s and 1970s with flashbacks to her youth at a French school in Dakar and her early childhood in a small Senegalese village. Her somewhat fictionalized chronicle begins with her journey to Brussels, where she has won a scholarship to study: "The North of dreams, the North of illusions, the North of allusions. The frame of reference North, the Promised Land North."

But the book is framed within that childhood village and the family compound shaded by a baobab sprouted from a seed children left behind. A baobab, a compound, and a village eventually abandoned.

Indeed the overarching theme of the book is show more abandonment -- an abandoned child, an abandoned childhood, an abandoned culture and religion superseded by colonial values, even the abandoned idea of a new kind of life. Ken's sense of displacement is heightened by the drug use and sexual freedom of the era's counter-culture. While the book is revelatory and important, it is often agonizing to read. Not for the faint of heart. show less

Senegal. Without at all intending to diminish the importance of post-colonialism as a destroyer of group and individual identity in this disconnected, often anguished memoir, there appears to be more going on than that. Whether her account is accurate or heightened for literary purposes, Bugul would seem to have a personality disorder as well as cultural disruption and dissonance. Certainly both forms of alienation and fragmented identity could co-occur and heighten each other. Her behavior and emotions are so extreme and self-harmful that, rather than being wrenched by the conflicts of post-colonial existence, the reader may simply see Bugul as dangerous to be close to.

Bugul uses symbolism and returns to pivotal events that are show more reductive and serve more as emblems than explanations. The style is poetic but the descriptions and assertions are often ultimately incoherent. As an artifact of drug abuse and emotional splintering, it's vivid. Ultimately, though, African writers such as [a:Alain Mabanckou|70642|Alain Mabanckou|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1283691655p2/70642.jpg], [a:Abdourahman A. Waberi|56973|Abdourahman A. Waberi|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg], and [a:Donato Ndongo|1124325|Donato Ndongo|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nophoto/nophoto-M-50x66.jpg] express themselves more effectively in similar styles. Granted, Mabanckou and Waberi are also sardonic and poke fun at themselves, so there is an ironic distance. Bugul's anger and apparent disorientation may not provide sufficient separation from the subject for her to craft an effective narrative. show less

Ken Bugul is the pseudonym of Mariétou M'Baye, a Senegalese author born in 1947. Apparently this memoir, which is translated from the French, caused a stir when it was first published in the very early 80s due to her frankness about all aspects of her life - including her sex life, drug use and prostitution. The memoir basically tells the story of Bugul's life in Africa up to when she leaves to study in Belgium and her years in Europe. The narrative is not chronological, and the book begins with Ken's 'prehistory' reminiscent of traditional African storytelling. The afterward calls the book an autobiographical novel which suggests some of the material is fiction, but truth can still be found in inexactitude, so this didn't bother me as show more much as I thought it would. This is a story of a young woman's search for identity - a young, bright, colonized, black African woman's story. Her struggle is painful to 'watch' as she suffers and stumbles quite a bit before she comes to an understanding of her place in the world. Her observations of the progressive European mindset at that time (late 60s, early 70s) are very interesting. This is a very good book, enlightening. show less

Histoire d'une jeune sénégalaise qui émigre en Belgique au temps de la colonisation/post-colonisation.

500 great books by women
don't know what to say about this. every reading after the first, i picked it up with a sigh.

Eine Afrikanerin in Europa