Recommendations
Books Like Une si longue lettre (So Long a Letter) by Mariama Bâ
African feminist fiction, Senegalese literature, and novels about women and tradition
If Une si longue lettre (So Long a Letter) moved you with Ramatoulaye's courage in writing her grief, her anger, and her gradual reclamation of herself after abandonment, these eight works share its intimate rendering of women's lives under patriarchal pressure, its fusion of personal and political, and its insistence on women's inner lives as worthy of the novel's full attention.
- 1
Buy on AmazonChanges: A Love Story
by Ama Ata Aidoo
Aidoo's Ghanaian novel of an Accra woman's divorce and second marriage — the most direct contemporary African feminist novel to So Long a Letter, winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize.
- 2
Buy on AmazonOur Sister Killjoy
by Ama Ata Aidoo
Aidoo's hybrid Ghanaian masterpiece — Sissie's anger at European culture and at African men who remain there is the more experimental, furious version of the critique Bâ makes through Ramatoulaye's grief.
- 3
Buy on AmazonPurple Hibiscus
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Adichie's debut — the most direct descendant of Bâ's feminist realism; Kambili's escape from her father's religious tyranny is the coming-of-age version of what Ramatoulaye endures as an adult.
- 4
Buy on AmazonHalf of a Yellow Sun
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Adichie's Biafra novel — two Nigerian sisters during the Nigeria-Biafra war; the same feminist attention to women's experiences of historical catastrophe that Bâ brings to women's experiences of domestic abandonment.
- 5
Buy on AmazonNervous Conditions
by Tsitsi Dangarembga
Dangarembga's Zimbabwean novel of a girl's education in the colonial system and the costs it exacts on the women around her — the feminist consciousness of So Long a Letter applied to the question of education and liberation.
- 6Buy on Amazon
Season of Migration to the North
by Tayeb Salih
The Sudanese postcolonial novel from the African francophone tradition — the colonial encounter's gender dynamics seen from the male side; Salih's Mustafa is the man whose actions produce women like Ramatoulaye's predicament.
- 7
Buy on AmazonThe Joys of Motherhood
by Buchi Emecheta
Emecheta's Nigerian novel of a woman's life under the Igbo patriarchal system in the colonial period — the West African feminist realism parallel to Bâ's Senegalese feminist realism.
- 8
Buy on AmazonTheir Eyes Were Watching God
by Zora Neale Hurston
Hurston's African-American novel of Janie Crawford's three marriages and her search for a love that honors her full humanity — the American feminist realist tradition that parallels Bâ's African one.
More Une si longue lettre (So Long a Letter) by Mariama Bâ Resources
More Reading Recommendations
View all →Monthly Newsletter
Never miss a big release
Get the most anticipated upcoming books delivered to your inbox once a month — no spam, no filler.
Monthly only. Unsubscribe anytime.
Book links are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, BookReleaseRadar earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.