Abstract
"Par l'écriture, [les femmes africaines] signent leur premier acte de rébellion contre ces sociétés qui ont toujours fait d'elles de simples spectatrices". In this sentence, the author shows that writing is a form of emancipation for African women. In the context of decolonization of the second part of the 20th century, African women started to talk about problems of women especially with the constraints of religion and the weight of the society. Mariama Bâ, a Senegalese educated author, is in keeping with this wave of what we can call feminism. In her first novel "So Long a Letter? she engages with the theme of cultural conflict especially in her representation of the main character Ramatoulaye. The character is depicted as being born in a society torn between tradition and the modernizing notions that colonialism brought.
