UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI

FACULTY OF ARTS

DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE

COURSE TITLE: AFRICAN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

COURSE CODE: CLT 516

COURSE INSTRUCTOR: DOCTOR JENNIFER MUCHIRI

TERM PAPER: INSPIRATIONAL FIGURES RECONSTRUCTED FROM MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD IN WANJIKU KABIRAS A LETTER TO MARIAMA BA

SUBMITTED BY: CHRISTINE NJOKI MBUGUA

REG. NO: C50/ 68683/2011

DATE OF SUBMISSION: 25th JANUARY, 2012

INTRODUCTION
Mariama B is one of Africas most renowned female writers, known especially for her semiautobiographical novella, So Long A Letter. This novella is written in the epistolary form, as the title suggests, a style that was common to novels in the 18 th century particularly those written by, or about, women. The epistolary, or letter form, is characterized by its intimate, emotional and reflective nature. When Mariama B uses this form to write her novel in, the result is thus a powerful insight into the intimate thoughts and concerns of the African woman.

So Long A Letter is semi-autobiographical in nature. Just like the main protagonist (and narrator) in the text, Ramatoulaye, B was one of the first women in her generation to acquire formal schooling in Senegal and was a teacher by profession. She was raised as a Muslim by her grandparents. B was not just a writer and a teacher; however, she also ended up being a political activist and pioneered the womens rights movement in Senegal. B married a Senegalese member of parliament, Obye Diop, but divorced him and was left to care for their nine children. This is similar to Ramatoulayes situation in the book where she was abandoned by her husband after 25 years of marriage, and was left to raise their twelve children on her own. Mariama Bs So Long A Letter addresses the situation of the contemporary African woman caught between oppressive and chauvinistic cultural norms and a burgeoning awareness of the right to be seen, heard and respected as a woman and as a rightful and equal member of the existing community. It is therefore not surprising that Wanjiku Mukabi Kabiras autobiographical epistolary text, A Letter to Mariama B also concerns itself the situation and
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concerns of the African woman. Ayoo Odioch, in her foreword to this text states that it refuels the thoughts, feelings and experiences of African women [viii]. She goes on the say that: It creates a web of relationships between the African woman and her environment, between fellow women and the forces at play in defining the place of women vis--vis that of men in contemporary society. The novella looks at the problems the African woman faces within a changing society. [viii] However, the striking difference between the two texts is that while Mariama Bs novella reflects on the experiences of the adult woman through an adult womans perspective, Kabiras autobiography is a journey back into her childhood memories in which she recalls and gives her perspective on the people, mainly women, whom she admired for their fortitude and courage during the Emergency Period in Kenyas colonial past.

I will thus be examining Wanjiku Kabiras text using two main lenses: theories and thoughts on autobiographies in general, and the autobiographies of childhood in particular, as well as the lens of feminist criticism. The writers, whose works I will be frequently be referring to in the course of my presentation are Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, from their text Reading Autobiography (2nd Edition); Kate Douglas, from her text Contesting childhood Autobiography, Trauma and Memory and lastly, Ann B Dobie from her text Theory Into Practice.

THE EPISTOLARY FORM AS AN INTIMATE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL FORM

In the introduction to the 2008 print publication of Mariama Bs novella So Long A Letter, Kenneth Harrow indicates in a footnote that Christopher Miller in his analysis of Bs novella has noted that this letter form was common to novels of the eighteenth century but is extremely rare to African Literature [i]. Harrow goes on to say that before Bs novella, African literature portrayed the situation of the mature troubled woman as representative of womens plight, that is, as victims like those appearing in the fiction written by Senegalese men [ii]. He goes on to say that women were represented as disempowered or abused [ii]. In Bas novella however, says that through Bs use of the letter form, Aissatou functions as the interlocutor of Ramatoulayes letters, standing in the place of the reader who shares in the accounts presented in the letters. The readers place is defined by this address of mature sister to sister, of Senegalese woman to Senegalese woman, and this is brought into an intimate, private space created by B [i-ii]. Jennifer Muchiri when discussing Kabiras A Letter to Mariama B tells us that the letter form is a narrative strategy that allows the writer to explore herself as a woman by focusing on the lives of women in her immediate society [Womens Autobiography: Voices from Independent Kenya, 83]. The implication is thus apparent that when a female writer employs the letter form, she will most probably be focusing on women as a central concern.

Ann McElaney-Johnson in her paper Epistolary Friendship: La prise de parole in Mariama Ba's Une si longue letter, states that The letter is a rejoinder in an ongoing dialogue. Addressed to a
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specific person, its style and content are defined by the anticipation of another's words [113]. In other words, the addressee of the letter determines its contents. Kabiras writing to Mariama B takes on a new significance especially once the reader recognises B as a feminist writer who was one of the first female activists to gain prominence in Africa. The feminist leanings in Kabiras text would thus be not only unsurprising but would even be anticipated by the reader.

McElaney-Johnson in her paper cites another scholar commenting on the epistolary form: Altman identifies two types of confidants in epistolary literature. The passive confidant is absent from the letter; he plays no role in the correspondence other than as silent addressee of a missive. The active confidant on the other hand is involved to varying degrees in the story and may influence the plot and may write letters of her own [116]. While in Bs novella, Aissatou clearly functions as the active confidant, in Kabiras autobiography, B functions as the passive confidant whose role seems primarily to serve as a sounding board for Kabiras childhood recollections of men and women who defied either knowingly or not, the traditional gender roles expected of them.

Towards the end of her paper McElaney-Johnson argues that The epistolary relationship between writer and reader engenders the thematic texture of the novel. The text not only tells the stories of women facing difficult cultural challenges but also inscribes their friendship into the very fabric of the novel [118]. Although clearly basing her premise on Bs So Long A Letter, we can argue that because Kabira not only models her autobiographical novella on the form of
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So Long A Letter but also addresses her letter to Mariama B herself, then these concepts advanced by McElaney-Johnson can to a certain extent be applied to Kabiras text as well. In that regard then, we can draw the parallels between the two texts because it is clear that not only does Kabira present her perceptions of men and women from her childhood who faced difficult cultural challenges, but she also at the same time reveals her close connection to these people from her childhood; a connection created through the various ties of family, empathy and admiration.

Walid El Hamamsy notes that with historically, the letter thus provided authors with a chance to write realistically, being one of the most credible narrative media due to the first-hand experience it encompasses [Epistolary Memory: Revisiting Traumas in Women's Writing, 152]. El Hamamsy notes that the letter form has an advantage as its inherent intimacy attracts both the reader and the writer of the epistle. The reader feels privileged to be able to partake in the thoughts and feelings of the writer which are expressed to her/him and the fictional reader(s) alone. The letter writer, on the other hand, is given a chance to voice feelings and thoughts that s/he might not otherwise have been able to do due to social conventions and the nature of public discourse [152]. This intimacy is evident in Kabiras text where the reader feels as if he/she is listening in on a private conversation between Wanjiku Kabira and Mariama B. In addition, one feels that as Kabira writes about her childhood recollections of women we would in the present day term as activists, one can then begin to see that female activism is not a recent addition to the Kenyan
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scene but has actually been there for a long time. It is only the nomenclature that is new but the concept behind it is not.

El Hamamsy goes on to note that letter writing has almost always been a mode chosen by women writers throughout the history of English literature. Although there have always been men writers resorting to the epistolary form, the genre remains associated with womenMartensaccounts for the appeal of that particular form to women by the fact that "as a flexible, open, and non-teleological structure, it complements the non-autobiographical quality of women's lives and the traditionally dependent, accommodating female role [152-153]. If we take Martens comments on the letter forms appeal to women and apply them to Kabiras A Letter to Mariama B, we see the relevance immediately. She uses the letter form to reflect on actual women drawn from her childhood memories who because of their difficult circumstances find non-traditional ways to endure in a world that does not allow them to reflect on the paths that they choose to follow. It is rather Kabira herself as the narrating I who will reflect on what she makes of their choices.

El Hamamsy concludes on the appropriateness of the letter form to contemporary writings by women thus: The letter thus suits "new feminine writing" which Hogan characterizes as "open, non-linear, unfinished, fluid, exploded, fragmented, polysemic"Letter writing
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becomes a question of identity that has to do with a whole gender's choice to speak, instead of being silent, and to subvert, instead of being subservient [153154]. If we examine Kabiras text through this particular lens, it is thus possible to view her text as one that challenges conventional or traditional norms by foregrounding in her autobiography men and women who challenged the status quo either subtly or overtly at a time when radical feminism in rural Kenya was unheard of. Kabira also provides a voice to these brave women who would otherwise remain known only to a chosen few. In A Letter to Mariama B she comments on page 16 that the story of their [the women she highlights in the text] role in the struggle for independence and those of many other women has not been told. Her telling of their story is fragmentary and non-linear, thus fitting in perfectly into the letter form. Kabiras choice of the letter form can thus be considered as being appropriate in regard to her focus on gender, norms and the need to adapt to fast-changing circumstances. The

AUTOBIOGRAPHY, MEMOIR OR TESTIMONIO?

Kabiras autobiography is mainly a focus on the lives of some of the villagers that she recalls from her childhood. Why then is it not labelled a biography of these people that she focuses on? It is because of the fact that in the act of recalling details about select adult figures from her childhood, she also, whether deliberately or inadvertently, reveals a lot about who she is as an individual and as a woman what she believes in as well as what is important to her. Kabiras autobiographical letter to Mariama B can thus be regarded either as a Testimonio or a memoir. Smith and Watson in Reading Autobiography explain that
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The term [testimonio] in Spanish literally means testimony and connotes an act of testifying or bearing witness legally or religiously. John Beverley defines Latin American testimonio as a novel or novella-length narrative in the first person by a narrator who is also the real protagonist or witness of the events he or she recounts, and whose unit of narration is usually a life or a significant life experience [Morgan At the Centre 92-93]. In testimonio, the narrator intends to communicate the situation of a groups oppression, struggle or imprisonment, to claim some agency in the act of narrating, and to call on readers to respond actively in judging the cases. Its primary concern in sincerity of intention, not the texts literariness...And its ideological thrust is the affirmation of the individual self in collective mode [ 282] Kabiras narration of the life experiences of women in the Mau Mau period of Kenya, clearly has some aspects of the testimonio, given that she, as a child, was a witness to the trials or tribulations than these women have undergone. Furthermore, although she narrates about specific individuals, it is clear that she is also seeing them as representative of a group, and she focuses particularly on the oppression, both overt and subtle, that women endured during this period of her childhood. In this regard, we can see how her text does indeed affirm the individual self in collective mode.

On the other hand, A Letter to Mariama B can also be categorised as a memoir if one examines Smiths and Watsons definition of the term. The start by stating that historically, [it was] a mode of life narrative that situated the subject in a social environment, as either
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observer or participant, the memoir directs attention more towards the lives and actions of others than to the narrator [289]. At this juncture, one would say that this definition could be applicable to Kabiras A Letter to Mariama B since Kabira as she as the narrating I is more an observer than a participant, with most of her text dwelling on the lives and actions of others than to the narrator. However, Smith and Watson go on to clarify that: In common parlance autobiography and memoir are used interchangeably. But distinctions are relevant. As Lee Quinby notes, whereas autobiography promotes an I that shares with confessional discourse an assumed interiority and an ethical mandate to examine that interiority, memoirs promote an I that is explicitly constituted in the reports of the utterances and proceedings of others. The I or subjectivity produced in memoirs is externalised anddialogical. In other words, in the context of Kabiras A Letter to Mariama B, the term memoir is applicable as the narrating I is definitely focused on mainly exploring other subjects that she observed as a child, often including their utterances and proceedings for example as shown on pages 6 to 8, in the dialogue between Tata and Monica, and on pages 9 to 11, this time exploring a dialogue between Sarah and Njoki. Smith and Watson conclude by saying that at present, the term memoir refers to life writing that takes a segment of a life, not its entirety, and focusing on interconnected experiences. [289]

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REVELATION OF THE NARRATING I AS A FEMINIST ACTIVIST

We see Kabira emerging as a feminist, an activist, a non-conformist, as well as a voice for those whose stories would otherwise be untold. Kate Douglas in her text, Contesting Childhood informs the reader that: Whitlock predicts that further changes in autobiographies of childhood will occur as a consequence of future social-political shifts: The more autobiographical writing is used by those who have not been authoritative or dominating then the more likely it is that childhood narratives will be a record of the incursions of history and conflict rather than a pre-adolescent idyllic phase[42] Whitlocks prediction is very much in keeping with Wanjiku Kabiras autobiography that looks back at a childhood impacted by the Mau Mau guerrilla warfare and the punitive measures imposed by a vengeful colonial government. In particular, she chooses to focus on her recollections or impressions of how some of the women in her childhood responded to this challenging environment.

Douglas goes on to point out that: Autobiographies of childhood have emerged at a time when memory has entered a range of discourses from science to philosophy and social science - in an extraordinary way. Michael Lambek and Paul Antze write We live in a time when memory has entered public discourse to an unprecedented degree. Memory is involved to heal, to blame, to legitimate. It has become a major idiom
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in the construction of identity, both individual and collective and a site for struggle as well as identification [20] When this claim is considered in the context of Kabiras autobiography, one can see the relevance. Kabira, in particular, recalls the vulnerable adults from her childhood, mainly the widowed young women whose husbands had been killed in the Mau Mau war against the colonial government. In recalling the difficult circumstances that many of these women had to contend with for most of their lives, she realizes that this reflected their great inner strength and this heals her remembrance of their long-enduring hurts. On page 13, she says, For Margaret, and many other young widows like her, their lives were at crossroads where the growth of new culture and fruits of womens struggle for liberation have emerged. Kabira recognizes that female activism in Kenya has its foundations in the responses to lifes challenges that Margaret, and other widows like her, made.

Most of the text in fact, is primarily concerned with Kabiras reflective memories of those women who struggled to overcome many challenges posed not only by unforeseen circumstances such as the early death of ones husband, but also posed by tradition and religion. Ann B Dobie commenting on feminist criticism in her text Theory Into Practice cites Nancy Chodorow, from her text The Reproduction of Mothering where she says that girls and boys develop a different concept of self because of different relationships with the mother, the primary parent in the home. Girls maintain an on-going gender role identification with the mother from the beginning [108 109]. To break away from such engrained gender roles must
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be difficult and yet a number of women in the text manage to do so, even given the fact that it is against societal norms. Kabira admiringly tells Mariama B that: I cannot stop admiring these women for their resilience. They became widows in their early twenties, never got married again, but brought up their children in spite of poverty and war [8]. For Kabira, these women are not objects of pity or victims; they are instead women to be admired and emulated.

PORTRAYAL OF TWO RADICAL WOMEN

Two women in particular, stand out from the text as being quite radical in their defiance of societal norms. The first woman is identified by Kabira as Auntie Muthoni wa Wilson. She is introduced to us initially in the text when she is in the process of mourning her loss of freedom now that she is a newly-married woman [19-20]. This already tells us that she is a revolutionary woman who does not see a womans existence as being defined by her role as a wife. Kabira tells us how she recalls Auntie Muthoni telling her that she could not live in chains in marriage. She was born to be free of mind and spirit [26]. The words chains and free juxtaposed against each other as they are, suggest that for Auntie Muthoni, marriage is synonymous with entrapment, probably because of the traditional assignation of gender roles that could prove extremely limiting or stifling for one who needed to be free of such imposed constraints. The word born in relation to freedom asserts that in following her inclinations, Auntie Muthoni

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was actually fulfilling her destiny; what she was born to do. This lends to Auntie Muthonis actions an almost mystical or spiritual impetus that could not have been denied.

Auntie Muthonis husband was a violent man who would beat her up and oppress her in other ways. Rather than stoically endure as was the norm (Kabira indicates on page 20 that she was unlike many women who put up with beatings and other forms of oppression), Auntie Muthoni, we are told, Walked out of marriage and headed for Nairobi to lead an independent life [20]. This was despite existing public censure since it was believed that women who went to live in Nairobi alone and independently were prostitutes [20]. Auntie Muthoni is portrayed as being ready to go against the norm in her search for freedom to live [20]. In other words, Auntie Muthoni believed that to accept and endure marital oppression as was the traditional and expected norm, was to endure a form of mental and spiritual slavery and was ultimately a land of living death. To avoid this, we are told that She defied tradition [20]. Defied is a rather strong choice of word painting an image of a strong, assured and self-willed woman. What did Kabira the child make of this? She admired her. When Auntie Muthoni decided that two children were enough despite the fact that she did not as yet have a son as society expected, she is reported by Kabira as saying To hell with sons! I will not give birth to other children[21]. Kabira comments on this by saying she was just a courageous woman who defied traditionSome might even be tempted to call her a nonconformist, a gender activist [21].

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Kabira thus bears out Sidonie Smiths and Julia Watsons assertions in their text, Reading Autobiography that In autobiographical narratives, imaginative acts of remembering always intersect with such rhetorical acts as assertion, justification, judgment, conviction, and interrogation. [7] Kabira has asserted Auntie Muthonis right to follow her choices although these are nonconformist in nature; she provides justification for Auntie Muthonis pursuits of independence and her walking out of an abusive marriage. She speaks with conviction about Auntie

Muthonis decisions she whole-heartedly admires this decision and shows no doubt about the rightness of Auntie Muthoni taking this step; and finally, as the adult narrator, she interrogates Auntie Muthoni and thinks of her in terms such as non-conformist and gender activist clearly adult rather than child-like concepts.

The other woman who stands out very distinctly in the text is Auntie Wanjiru wa Kangethe. Kabira informs us that Auntie Wanjiru was a freedom fighter in the Mau Mau war of independence. [22] From this introduction to Auntie Wanjiru, the reader is made aware that she must have been an extraordinary woman as it was mainly the men who were actively involved in the Mau Mau. Kabira goes on to say that not only did she feed them and shop for them, but she also took the beatings and torture on their behalf [22]. This informs us of her courage and fortitude, and the fact that she was a woman who was ready to endure hardship in order to stand up for what she believed in. When her husband acts cowardly when faced with

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torture from the home guards she divorces him, something almost unheard of in this time, as evidenced in the astonished tone in Kabiras words: wonders of wonders! As soon as she settled in Nairobi, she went to the chief of Kariobangi estate where she resided and asked for assistance to change her name by dropping her husbands name [23] Rather than feeling honoured to be chosen to be someones wife, and thus acquiring value in the eyes of society, Auntie Wanjiru instead, and unusually, asserts her sense of self-worth: To call me Wanjiru wa Kaguru is to abuse me. The man I have lived with should not be given that honour. He is not worthy of it. I am Wanjiru wa Kangethe. I am Kangethes daughter and I am proud of that! [23] Notice her repetition of the phrase, I am. She knows herself and is comfortable and assured of her self-identity. In a way, she is a forerunner of an increasing number of Kenyan women in the present day who even when they marry choose to keep their surnames and refuse to adopt those of their husbands. Others choose to hyphenate their surnames with those of their husbands. To this end, Aunt Wanjiru comments that It is good to have a husband and be single at the same time [23].

Kabiras inclusion in her autobiography of these two women, as well as the other individuals she comments on can be related to an aspect of autobiographical writing known as Relational Life Writing. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson in Reading Autobiography inform us that This term was proposed by Susan Stanford Friedman in 1986 to characterize the model of selfhood in womans autobiographical writingFriedman argues that
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womens narratives asserts a sense of shared identity with other women, an aspect of identification that exists in tension with a sense of their own uniqueness [278] Kabiras developing self-identity as an activist, feminist and non-conformist is thus seen as a result not directly of her own experiences which she hardly mentions, but rather a sharing of the experiences of the woman she encountered in her childhood, and who proves to have had a profound impact on her.

THE MASCULINE EMASCULATED

Although Kabira mainly focuses on women in her text, it is important to note the two men that she does focus on in her narration. A Letter to Mariama B is clearly focused on gender issues arising from the roles of men and women in this particular place and time. It is therefore not surprising that the two male figures she narrates about have been emasculated in some sense and do not fit into the traditional gender roles assigned to men.

The first male figure we encounter in the text is Wanyahunyu. When talking about him on page 2, she respects the phrase I used to see him several times. Always, it is in reference to his daily routine of gardening or fetching water from the river while this establishes Wanyahunyu as hard-working she does not recount seeing him idle it also presents a mystifying spectacle [then] of a man doing work normally performed by women or girls. On one of the occasions that Kabira recalls seeing him, he was fetching water from the same stream from which she would fetch water. The idea derived from this recollection of a memory from her childhood is that the tasks Wanyahunyu performed is what made him such a distinctive and memorable
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figure he was not representative of the norm for men in Kabiras childhood recollection of her world, and thus, he stood out for her.

Kabira then goes on to comment on the most distinctive feature that Wanyahunyu possesses that also makes him very memorable to her: he lives in a hole in the ground. The authentic nature of this autobiographical letter is evident in the genuine confusion that colours her words on why he would do this. She makes it very clear that he was not a fugitive in hiding from the government and even after the example of another man who also lived in a hole as he was in hiding from the colonial government as he was a Mau Mau activist. Even now as an adult, engaged in the process of reflection and recall, Kabira has no answers for what she clearly sees as mysterious behaviour. She ponders further on Wanyahunyus mystery because he was unmarried, another mystifying element of his character. Clearly Kabira grew up in a culture where adult roles were mainly defined by marriage and parenthood. Wanyahunyu exhibited neither of these. She goes on to indicate that clearly, the choice for this state of being must have been Wanyahunyus to make: Wanyahunyu lived on a world where men had choices; that is, he could choose a woman while according to Gikuyu tradition, women waited to be chosen [4]. Just as the women that Kabira highlights in the text have challenged the gender roles assigned to them by society, we now see a man also having his role clearly defined as well. Clearly her childhood was a period of change, a state of displacement caused by the disruption of guerrilla warfare and a hostile colonial government. In this context, one can read Kabira from a feminist point of view. Dobie, in her text Theory into Practice says that todays outspoken feminists
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complain of the imbalance of power between the sexes [116.] According to Dobie, feminist critics, analyse the male / female power structure that makes women the other (the inferior) and they reject it. They work to abolish limiting stereotypes of women. They seek to expose patriarchal premises and the prejudices they create. Often, they challenge traditional, static ways of seeing gender and identity [114]. The women Kabira focuses on, as well as the character of Wanyahunyu clearly exhibit the above.

The other male figure who is examined in the text is Githinji wa Nyagiko. Like Wanyahunyu, he is depicted as being atypical of the male persona in this community. He is described as being mentally-handicapped although strong and hardworking. However, what seems to make him stand out is the fact that his brother, who is supposed to be looking after him ends up exploiting him instead. Kabiras description of his brothers treatment of Githinji is that he used like a donkey [17]. This simile underscores that this treatment was not only abusive but actually dehumanising, reducing Githinji to the level of a beast. However, this was not the only humiliation heaped upon Githinji. Kabira recalls how the village children would mock him with a song that mocked the fact that he was unmarried and showed no interest in women. Again, like in Wanyahunyus case, we see a depiction of a culture that had such clearly established gender norms, that even children knew of them and regarded anyone not fitting into this form as other or alien.

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Kabira, also highlights how puzzling it was for her that Githinji combined both the male and female roles [18] in his daily chores. Kabira goes on to say that only these two men, Githinji wa Nyagiko and Wanyahunyu, fetched water and collected firewood. These were female roles in the village as they were in all other Gikuyu villages [18]. For the young Kabira, these two men clearly played their role, just as the strong women of the village did, in making her question the existing status quo that existed in term of expected gender roles.

Ironically, Kabira narrates to the reader that both these men eventually had to be assisted by women. Githinji ended up escaping from his brothers cruelty with the assistance of Kabiras mother and went to live with his sister, Auntie Muthoni wa Wilson, who was discussed earlier in the paper. The contrast drawn between the two is striking: on the one hand a strong, independent woman, and on the other a weak defenceless man. Wanyahunyu as well in the last days of his life had to be taken in by a widowed woman, Monica, who looked after him until he died. Kabira makes a point about this by saying that neither Monica nor Muthoni had a husband [18]. She is making it very clear to the reader that in a society where it was the norm for the man to be the protector and the provider, there was now a reversal of roles with the women taking on this dominant role.

However, it is important for the reader to realise that Kabira is not necessarily being objective in her portrayal of men as vulnerable. When it comes to her father, she portrays him as a strong and admirable man. Jennifer Muchiri notes that although she has two characters in the text, Tata Wilson and Monica do the praising in a dialogue between them, in an effort to appear unbiased, she does not succeed because her father is the only strong male character in her
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autobiography [Womens Autobiography: Voices from Independent Kenya, 84]. It is also striking that all he female characters are strong; none are portrayed as flawed or weak. The idea of selectivity, and thus bias, is thus very hard to ignore.

THE NON-LINEAR STUCTURE OF A LETTER TO MARIAMA B

A Letter to Mariama B does not have a linear plot but is instead made up of a loose recollection of reminisces about different individuals from her childhood. This actually is in keeping with some styles of autobiographical writing. Smith and Watson, in Reading

Autobiography say that the stuff of autobiographical storytellingis drawn from multiple, disparate, and discontinuous experiences and the multiple identities constructed from and constituting those experiences [40]. Douglas in Contesting Childhood: Autobiography Trauma and Memory adds to this saying that Memory drives autobiography, and in turn, autobiographies influence perceptions of the ways in which memory functions. Memory necessarily forms the backbone of autobiographical writing about childhood [21]. What we can derive from the three writers is that since memory is rarely linear, it follows that autobiography, which is mostly based on memory, does not necessarily have to be arranged in a linear fashion.

Jennifer Muchiri in Womens Autobiography: Voices from Independent Kenya notes that despite the non-linear plot of Kabiras text, the continuous address to Ba serves as a cohesive strategy for the letter, holding the various characters and events together [85]. This cohesive strategy, combined with the use of the letter form and the autobiographical nature of the text all combine to work very effectively together.
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CONCLUSION
In conclusion, Kabira concurs with Mariama Bs words views expressed through her protagonist Ramatoulaye in her text So Long A Letter that women should no longer be decorative accessories, objects to be moved about, companions to be flattened or calmed with promises (64). She exalts what it means to be a woman enduring hardship and riot only endures, but rising above it. Mariama B through Ramatoulaye also says that my heart rejoices each time a woman emerges from the shadows [93]. Kabira extends this concept in her own autobiography and enlightens us on those brave women [and men] who had the courage not to conform but because they were not key public figures and thus remained in the shadows. Wanjiku Kabira has now shed light on them and at the same time allowed us to see her roots in activism.

At the same time, it must be noted that although Kabira has allowed us to see her memories of some of the notable men and women from her childhood, she has not allowed us to see very much of herself as an active participant in this time. Although the reader can comfortably feel that the text reveals some of Kabiras principles and values, he/she cannot say that they have come to know her as an individual with a specific personal experiences. It is ironic that Kabiras choice of the epistolary mode, which is supposed to be one of the most intimate forms fails to reveal her as person except in a very general way.

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LIST OF WORKS CITED

B, Mariama. So Long A Letter. Reading: Heinemann [Pearson Educational Publishers], 2008. Print.

Douglas, Kate. Contesting Childhood: Autobiography, Trauma and Memory. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2010. Epub. El Hamamsy, Walid and . Epistolary Memory: Revisiting Traumas in Women's Writing. Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, No. 30, Trauma and Memory / .571-051 :)0102( JSTOR. Web. 21 Jan 2012.

Kabira, Wanjiku Mukabi. A Letter to Mariama B. Nairobi: University of Nairobi Press, 2005. Print.

McElaney-Johnson, Ann. Epistolary Friendship: La prise de parole in Mariama B's Une si longue lettre . Research in African Literatures, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Summer, 1999): 110121. JSTOR. Web. 24 Jan 2012.

Muchiri, Jennifer. Womens Autobiography: Voices from Independent Kenya. Saarbrucken: VDM Verlag dr. Muller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, 2010. Print.

Smith, Sidonie and Julia Watson. Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. 2nd Ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. Epub.

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