Sembene Ousmane

God's Bits of Wood

Marion

'That is all I had to say, and I have said it in French so that he would understand me, although I think this meeting should have been woulacted in Ouolof, since that is our language.'

Real misfortune is not just a matter of being hungry and thirsty; it is a matter of knowing that there are people who want you to be hungry and thirsty - and that is the way it is with us.

This business of the help we are getting from outside. I don’t understand it. The support from the French Unions, for instance. You have Europeans who have come all the way from up there, just to break up the strike, and then there are Europeans who send us money to go on with it. Don’t you think it’s odd?

'Learning - learning what?' Niakoro demanded, and there was both mockery and sadness in her voice. 'If I call you I am told not to disturb you - and why? Because you are learning the white man's language. What use is the white man's language to a woman? To be a good mother you have no need of that. Among my people, who are your father's people, too, no one speaks the white man's language, and no one has died of it! Ever since I was born - and God knows that was a long time ago - I have never heard of a white man who had learned to speak Bambara, or any other language of this country. But you rootless people think only of learning his, while our language dies.’

The first time I read this book was in 2022, and I thought it was a great book and should be considered an African class. The second time reading has been a great revelation. Since the last time I read it, I have spent much time reading and engaging with Marxist ideas and readings and can claim this book as one of the greatest Marxist novels.

The novel published in 1960 is a fiction based on a real strike that happened in 1947 colonial French Africa where railway workers refused to return to work until they received better compensation and benefits. Just as in Sembene’s films women are at the center of he’s stories with women leading in this anti colonial class struggle and the struggle against colonial cruelty changing aspects of patriarchal society as both women and men are need to work together as a community against colonialism.

This is the only novel I’ve read twice so at least I have an answer now when people ask what my favorite book is.

The first time I read this book was in 2022, and I thought it was a great book and should be considered an African class. The second time reading has been a great revelation. Since the last time I read it, I have spent much time reading and engaging with Marxist ideas and readings and can claim this book as one of the greatest Marxist novels.

The novel published in 1960 is a fiction based on a real strike that happened in 1947 colonial French Africa where railway workers refused to return to work until they received better compensation and benefits. Just as in Sembene’s films women are at the center of he’s stories with women leading in this anti colonial class struggle and the struggle against colonial cruelty changing aspects of patriarchal society as both women and men are need to work together as a community against colonialism.

This is the only novel I’ve read twice so at least I have an answer now when people ask what my favorite book is.

God's Bits of Wood

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