Her character is a rebel and stands up in the face of the injustice with which she is struck. What is striking about the novel is the writer’s gaze on customs and tradition, denouncing both their cruelty and sometimes appreciating their positive aspect.
From Proximity editions to Emmanuelle Collas editions
And in 2019, this book was awarded the first Orange Book Prize in Africa for which it was competing. When we awarded “Munyal, les larmes de la patience” this first Orange prize (1), nothing allowed us to imagine that it would end up being published in France under the title “Les impatientes”, chosen by its French editor, Emmanuelle Collas, a fighter herself, also a writer, (2). And some time later to see him competing for the 2020 Goncourt Prize! Surprise and joy mingled within the jury. This novel had been distinguished there for the mastery of construction, interweaving three voices of African women. He fully immerses himself in the suffocating universe of wives grappling with the weight of tradition, while avoiding Manichaeism.
“Les impatientes” are three women, Fulani, Moslems, Cameroonians: Hindo, forcibly promised to her own cousin, alcoholic, drug addict and womanizer; Ramla, Hindu’s half-sister, who, for her part, had met the man she loves before her father promised her to an uncle; And Safira, the first wife of the uncle in question, who will have to learn to live with young Ramla. Of these three women, the writer confessed to be closer to Ramla, the rebel, the one who thirsts to study and to lead a free life, Djaïlil Amadou Amal herself having experienced forced marriage at 17. She saved herself first by reading, then very quickly by writing, towards a new life. She tells this in the interview she gave to our colleague Hassina Mechaï, during the award ceremony in Cameroon.
From women of the Sahel to high school students in France
There is revolt and a poignant sincerity in the writing of this book, the issue of which affects women from all countries of the Sahel and beyond, those who are oppressed and abused, by the weight of religions and traditions. . The three characters are formidably present, the portraits of men too, and the plot moves forward very skillfully, not hiding the tricks and schemes, sometimes very cruel, which these ladies use between them. Under the Fulani word of Munyal, one should not only read its literal translation “patience” but the injunctions of submission and acceptance that it brings with it.
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At the head of an association for the education and development of women, “Femmes du Sahel”, the author has made literature a weapon of liberation. It proves beyond borders that it is not an empty word. And that it acts even in the classes of the lycées of France! This choice will mark the history of the Prix Goncourt with an unprecedented opening to the wide world, the choice of a book for the general public which, while revealing social codes far from our own, gives French-language literature its role of conveyor of humanity, d ‘wherever she is.
(1) Valérie Marin La Meslée was a member of the jury for the Orange Book Prize in Africa.
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