Djaili Amadou Amal is a Cameroonian writer, and feminist activist.
She is a Fula, native to the Diamare in the Far North region of Cameroon. She grew up in the region’s principal city, Maroua. She writes of the Fulbe culture and explores the social problems of both a contemporary and a traditional nature. Her work confronts the problems of women in Fulani society, as well as social problems in her region, the Sahel, especially the discrimination against women. Among her novels is Walaande, which is a Fulfulde word for conjugal unity, addressing the issue of polygamy among the Fulani who commonly practice polygamy. Walaande tells the story of four wives who have conceded to “the art of sharing a husband.”
Two of her other novels are Mistiriijo and La Mangeuse d’âmes (in English, The Eater of Souls). She writes mostly in the French language.
(Wikipedia)
Amadou Amal on Tiredness and Waiting
If anything here it is the male figures who are ghostly, insubstantial, even inscrutable, for all their visibility and volubility.
- Amadou Amal, Djaïli. The Impatient. Trans. Emma Ramadan. New York: HarperVia, 2022.
Amadou Amal Videos
Interview with Djaïli Amadou Amal:
NDI 2021 – Grand entretien avec Djaïli Amadou Amal:
A must read book from Djaili Amadou Amal:
Ramla and Hindou’s father “calmly sips a cup of clove tea” as he gives his daughters parting advice just as they are about to leave his household: “Patience, my girls! Munyal! [. . .] That is the true value of our religion, of our customs, of pulaaku—our Fulani identity.” The women’s double wedding “is in full swing” (3), but it is a Moslem wedding, and as such free of alcohol and so also a suitable context for the dispensing of sober advice—not least the advice to remain sober, to suppress desire, and to respect boundaries. Cloves lack even the modest stimulant properties of caffeine, though they have been used as a mild analgesic (or painkiller) for minor irritations such as toothache. So although they are a classic spice, long traded and transported from Indonesia’s “Spice Islands” (the Moluccas), where they were originally to be found, they are famous more for adding a delicate flavour and aroma than for any “spiciness,” in terms of either heat or provocativeness. Both their analgesic qualities and their unobtrusiveness (as well as their rumoured properties as appetite suppressants) might recommend them to the armoury of the ideal wife, as she is envisaged by the father with his tea.
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