African-American Art: Young Woman and Her Survival

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Discussion
Conclusion
References

Introduction

The discussion and debate over gender issues in literature have been an interesting topic in many magazines, journals, and even talk shows. There have been many challenging manifestations that literature has presented given this topic. Themes that deal with these issues as well as the role of women in the real world, have become prevalent in today’s literary genres. This paper aims to provide examples of two literary works done by two writers who are bound by the same theme: young woman in defense of her survival.

Discussion

Djibril Diop Mambety’s untimely death due to lung cancer was considered a loss by many in the world of cinema production. He was a director, actor, composer, poet, and orator from Senegal. Although he made only a number of films, all of them received world acclaim because of his technical styles which were original and cinematic. Furthermore, he utilizes a non-linear conventional style of narration in all his works. He was 24 years old when he attempted to directed and produced his first film (despite his having no experience at all), City of Contrasts. The following year, he created Badou Boy which won him the Silver Tanit award at the 1970 Carthage Film Festival in Tunisia. His sophisticated and symbolic film Touki Bouki in 1973 won him the International Critics Award at the Cannes Film Festival and the Special Jury Award at the Moscow Film Festival. After this international acclaim, he did not make another film in twenty years but one, Let’s Talk Grandmother in 1989. Hyenes, done in 1992, his second and last feature film, is considered to be a continuation of Touki Bouki. Mambety was doing a trilogy of short films entitled Tales of the Little People at the time of his death. This trilogy is suppose to talk generally on the chronicles of those “invisible” people on the streets of all African cities whose major concern every day is how to survive through the day. The Girl Who Sold The Sun was the second of this trilogy and was shown posthumously in 1999. Djibril Diop Mambéty’s films uses a unique technique called hybridity (racial mixing) in his films. This cinematic medium comments on political and social conditions in Africa and aims to expose the diversity of real life in this black-dominated continent. In addition, Mambety colors most of his films with power, wealth, and delusion (Grayson, 2001).

The Girl Who Sold The Sun is about Sili Laam, a 12-year old girl who refuses to be intimidated by the dictates of a man-world. Most of the setting was in the marketplace (in Dakar) where Sili frequents to beg for alms along with her blind grandmother. Her being a paraplegic does not hinder her from earning a living. As her name suggests that she belongs to the leather worker’s caste, one of the most discriminated in Senegal, thereby making her doubly an outcast. However, her resilience made her refuse to accept the social norms labeled on her. She emphasized her stubbornness to bow down to the demeaning roles that society put on her person. She made a decision to become the first female newspaper vendor of Le Soliel, the country’s leading newspaper, perhaps to spite the boys around and to show them that “there is nothing that a male can do that the female can’t.” When a cop unjustly stopped her from being the newspaper girl that she opted to become, she went with him without a fight to the police station and accused him there of shaking her down. With this, she successfully demanded the release of a woman who was arrested earlier because she was accused of shoplifting, This lady insisted that she was a princess and not a thief yet her humiliation still led her to jail. With this development, Sili became a heroine, one who refuses to see the world as it is but insists to see it as it should be. Towards the end of the film, another news vendor steals Sili’s crutches. Babou Seck, an older boy who has been protecting Sili from many forms of harassment and problems, asked her what they should do now that her crutches are gone. “We continue,” is what Sili retorted. Then he carried her onto his back and wound themselves among the people crowding the marketplace (Balera, 1999).

Djibril Diop Mambety’s style in this short flick is inherent in all his works. Very glaring is his use of allegory to portray the contrast of poverty and wealth, man and woman, the elemental way of life against high technology. Vivid examples on the use of contrasts and irony are also artistically interwoven in this classic. In one scene, the main character takes a journey to central Dakar atop a donkey cart that trundles along the dirt edge of a major highway as flashy cars whiz by, as powerful a metaphor for the marginalization of Africa’s urban poor as I have ever seen. Another symbol of this contrast is a man methodically splitting a pile of rocks with a hammer while a jumbo jets takes off over his shoulder. These and more present an obvious adherence of the artist in Mambety that made him a unique and a no-nonsense film worker of this genre and age (Bakari, 1996).

Faize Guene is of Algerian descent, a French writer born in France in 1985 and is known to be one of the few very young writer and film makers of our time. She was fourteen when she wrote scripts of her first short film, La Zonzoniere. At nineteen she began conceptualizing and directing her first short film and consequently did others of the same genre. Originally she studied sociology but abandoned that field of study to pursue her love for movies and then started to produce her own. In 2004, she wrote Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow which sold 200,000 copies and translated into 22 different languages.(Henderson, 2004)

Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow is about a girl’s (Doria) coming of age and her Moroccan mother’s climb to power after her the latter’s husband left her for someone younger who can produce him a son that she was not able to do. Since then, mother and daughter lived an impoverished life of thrift store clothes, shiny social workers, food vouchers, school counselors, and minimum wage jobs. Her mother was able to work in a hotel for a short time but was forced out during a strike (Guene,2006).

This book is written in short chapters (not more than six pages each) and is a narrative of Doria’s day in and day out experiences isolated from her peers. The poverty that beset them (Doria and her mother) initially made her sullen enough to worry about her being a teenager, her wardrobe, and other concerns. Instead, the hopelessness that they are in made her really attuned to the reality that they are in. The novel is written more like in a journal/diary style in its narration rather in a prose form that most novels are. The chapter topics are about her on going crush on an older local ex-dealer, her regular interludes with various social workers to help her work on her adolescent angst, tutoring by a seemingly brilliant-weird boy, watching television, her first kiss, a babysitting job, and the start of hairdressing school which she decided to try her hand on. Laced into these details of her life is the not -so-surprising criticisms and watch-over of the traditional Arab patriarchy. These nationalistic and racial idealisms come out not only through her narration but that of her mother’s best friend who share some space in her journal-like story. Adding to this novel is a sneak of a neighborhood girl kept imprisoned by her father and brother. Things are not on their side, but eventually, things started to improve for her and her mother. The bitterness she feels as a young person is yet understandable but it is her personality that allows this young girl to overcome the most challenging hurdles she is into. Doria is very vocal and without fear would honestly say and address poverty with a blunt honesty that others may be afraid to say so. Her wry humor and practicality made Doria survive the turmoil that poverty has settled in their life. With her youth’s attitude of acceptance of the reality and the unstoppable attempts to change the situation, Dora was able to fend off the daily rigors of survival. When she turned sixteen, she was able to say that everything is turning sunny and her optimism really made their life more suitable and more perfect as love has come her way.

Guene’s Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow honestly studies the real, blunt, and painful reality of being poor, Arab, and a girl in a society that alienates people of color and within culture dominated by males that most often than not treats females as inferior beings. The amount of hopelessness born of a scenario like this one can be bone-crushing, and yet Dora, neglected by her father, ridiculed by some of the neighbors because she wears thrift shop clothes, and who resides directly outside of Paris. The style used by the author in writing this novel is tailored for her age. Not considering the new wave of young writers who seem to sound more mature than they really are, Guene is one of the few young people who can stay and sound their age without mature people reading them and feeling disgusted. The comparisons that she used in this narrative makes the narration realistic. As a reader, one could sense that every word is an expression of the author’s true self, like an autobiography. This opinion may ring true but as a whole, this novel is considered fiction as it is.

Djibril Diop Mambety and Faiza Guene are authors of two totally different stories yet are similar in some points. We can say that they never even saw each other nor even heard of each other’s existence. Yet, these two authors have struck a common denominator in their writings of two totally different plots and storylines. Djibril Diop Mambety’s The Girl Who Sold The Sun and Faiza Guene’s Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow are about the story of a young girl. Mamberty’s Sili is a 12- year old girl who fought hard to be someone amidst male dominance in a Dakar marketplace. Guene’s Doria is a 15-year old girl who strove hard to survive in a world of poverty amidst the existence of mail dominance. These are stories of young women discriminated by the power that men tried to exude over them. The study of gender (sensitivity and discrimination) in African American literature considers the way in which the texts of black writers have the clear and different expressions in African-American men and women writers. Researches, thesis and studies that critically and theoretically analyze these issues may explore the consequences of gendered identity upon the structure, theme, or style of African American texts. The historical development of these gender issues across the tradition of the literature may also be a focus of many contemporary writers like Mambety and Guene. This issue is vividly exhibited directly or indirectly in the themes and plots. African American literature has a racial identity. There have been many discussions of gender and racial identity and they all provoke vigorous argument, socially and politically.

Another point of similarity that both works share is its being penned by authors who have first hand experiences of the theme they are writing. Mambety is a native of Dakar, Senegal where he grew up and where the setting of the story happened. Guene, on the other hand is an Algerian bloodied citizen who practically is considered French because of her upbringing. The same as her main character, Doria, she has also experienced how it is like to be discriminated and suffer poverty in a First World country.

While Mambety wrote this masterpiece in his dying days, Guene wrote hers at such a young age when it is considered an unparalleled feat to even compose a decent thesis, much more write a novel. Being a young person who could write such vivid and wide scale seems to be something that can be looked upon with scrutiny. Guene wrote this story when she was nineteen and talking like she was on the shoes of her 15-year old protagonist could be a revelation. The realization that this was not an autobiography that is being read, can sometimes come towards the end of the book. On Mambety, the vividness of the whole storyline would make the reader feel that the author is one of the characters there in.

Conclusion

The works being studied in this paper are both effective examples of the feminism and the gender issue. How the young women in the stories fend for themselves and tried hard to survive in a male-dominated society are a feat that is not impossible in real life. Fiction though these two stories are, they are based from the stark realities of the old and present world.

Literary critics are generally male and they are rarely concerned with gender issues. Most of the world’s great literature had been written by men. Long time ago, it was difficult to think women really had it in them to write at the highest level. There was and there is still discrimination in literary writers. The subject matter on gender issues and feminism has become so prevalent that more and more screenwriters, playwrights, poets, and authors of varied materials, are writing about this in-time topic. This is not about racial or other types of discrimination but this is about gender discrimination where men still shouts it out how they are a better gender than women.

References

Bakari, Imruh, and Mbye B. Cham. African Experiences of Cinema. London: BFI Pub, 1996.
Balera, Lissa, Tairou M’Baye, Djibril Diop Mambe?ty, Silvia Voser, and Wasis Diop. La petite vendeuse de Soleil The little girl who sold The sun. San Francisco, CA: California Newsreel [distributor], 1999.
Grayson, Sandra M. “Djibril Diop Mambety A Retrospective.” Research in African Literatures. 32 (2001): 136-139.
Guene, Faiza, and Sarah Adams. Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow. Orlando: Harcourt, 2006.

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African-American Art: Young Woman and Her Survival

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