ABSTRACT
Ferdinand Oyono was born on September 14, 1929, in the village of N’Goulémakong, southeast Cameroon, among the forests and cocoa plantations that he uses as a backdrop for his novels. His father, Oyono Etoa Jean, a respected tribal leader determined to escape illiteracy, was first educated in German. Later, when France took over the colony, he reenrolled to pursue an education in French, embarking upon a career in colonial administration in 1923. Ferdinand Oyono’s mother, Mvodo Belinga Agnès, the daughter of a well-known chief, was just as illustrious as her baptized but polygamous husband. Unlike him, she was a devout, practicing Catholic and left the family home upon the arrival of the second wife, working as a seamstress in order to bring up Ferdinand and his younger sister, Mfoumou Elisabeth. Oyono’s primary school years were checkered with failure. They were undoubtedly marked both by the presence of a pious and affectionately dominant mother, who was supported by the local priests in her rejection of traditional ways, and by further exposure to the Catholic faith when he was a chorister and houseboy at the Catholic mission. Such experiences later became fuel for the anticlerical fire of his novels.
