Ousmane Sembene: Dialogues with Critics and Writers

This volume celebrates the work of Ousmane Sembène, the brilliant African filmmaker and writer. Since the 1950s, working in his native Senegal, Sembène has produced a series of films and novels that incisively depict the realities of contemporary African experience, particularly that of urban and industrial Africa. The book begins with critical essays on Sembène’s oeuvre by Frederick Ivor Case, Françoise Pfaff, Mbye Cham, and Claire Andrade-Warkins. There follows a series of presentations by distinguished black writers who discuss their craft and the ways in which language can function as a political act of cultural legitimation. These writers include Toni Cade Bambara, Earl Lovelace, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, John Edgar Wideman, and Sembène. 

The next section reproduces Sembène’s remarks on his film Camp de Thiaroye and an extended interview he recorded in Toronto in 1992. His comments are presented in both French and English. The volume concludes with annotated bibliographies of Sembène’s novels and of the films he has written and directed.

SAMBA GADJIGO is associate professor of French at Mount Holyoke College. RALPH H. FAULKINGHAM is professor of anthropology and THOMAS CASSIRER is professor emeritus of French at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. REINHARD SANDER is professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico.