Bâ, Mariama (1929–1981) Born in Dakar, Senegal, of Muslim parentage, she was brought up by strict grandparents after the death of her mother. Educated at the École Normale at Rufisque, Senegal, she began work as a secretary and a schoolteacher, before developing as a francophone novelist. Actively committed to several women's organisations, she spoke and wrote on feminist issues such as clitoridectomy, women's rights in marriage, child custody and polygamy, and these became major subjects in her fiction. So Long a Letter (1980) is an epistolary novel that acts as a testimony to the silent suffering of women in Africa, and was judged the best novel in a French territory, receiving the first Noma prize.