Novel
Rebelle
Not translated into English
Fatou Keïta · 1998
Synopsis
An adolescent from Boritouni, a village where all the girls pass through the hands of the excisor, Malimouna escapes the rite by blackmail. Given by her father to a man much older than herself, who discovers on the wedding night that she has not been excised, she runs away. A long apprenticeship begins: as a domestic servant, she reaches France, resumes her studies to become a social worker and gradually makes the cause of women her own.
Context
The book appeared in 1998 in Abidjan from Nouvelles Éditions ivoiriennes and in Paris from Présence africaine. It was the first novel by its author, who until then had published only works for young readers, and it took excision as its subject. In a review of 2010, Jean-Marie Volet read it as a female coming-of-age novel, which gives a resolutely positive turn to an account of the serious difficulties that Ivorian girls encounter.
Who it is for
A novel in French of two hundred and thirty pages; it addresses excision and forced marriage of adolescent girls without detour.
Prizes and reception
On the national curriculum for Ivorian first-year classes, according to an interview given by the author in 2016 to the magazine The Common.
Sources for this page 7
The pages consulted to check this page.