Narrative
Kesso, princesse peuhle
Not translated into English
Kesso Barry · 1988
Synopsis
Kesso, daughter of the almamy of Mamou, tells her life to her daughter Sandra. A child of a noble Fula family of the Fouta Djallon, she spends her days with the boys, wears shorts, bathes in a swimsuit at the river and even follows her brother Alphadio, dressed as a boy, into a ceremony reserved for men, to the scandal of the notables. Promised in a princely marriage, she chooses to marry Baïlo, the younger son of a modest family, then, when this union no longer offers her a way out, sets out to win over a French industrialist settled in Guinea.
Context
Published by Seghers, the book runs to some two hundred and thirty pages. It is addressed to Sandra, who knows nothing of African customs; Edgard Sankara notes a paradox in it, since in Fulani society the telling of a life falls to the griots and not to the nobles. The author also evokes the schoolteacher Fanta Sylla, who caused a scandal by asking girls to wear shorts for physical education. Irène Assiba d'Almeida read it in 1997 as a subverted tale, and Sankara as a woman's appropriation of masculine attributes in a male-dominated society.
Who it is for
For those interested in life stories of African women and in Fulani princesses in the time of the almamys.
Prizes and reception
Presented in 1988 by the magazine Amina, it met with only a limited reception, according to the chapter devoted to it by Edgard Sankara in 2011.
Sources for this page 5
The pages consulted to check this page.