The Fury and Cries of Women

by Angèle Rawiri

  “What is with you?” Joseph intervened, “I thought I was quite clear with my mother!”

  Openly ignoring her husband, Emilienne added, directing her comment at the mother:

  “Now you can have him all to yourself.”

  “Don’t let yourself be humiliated anymore, Son. She has done enough harm already. We are finally going to be able to breathe! I have been working on this for a long time.”

  “Very well,” Emilienne added, “start clearing your things out of this house right now.”

  She got up and walked resolutely toward the door. Roxanne, who was waiting for her in front of the car, jumped onto her lap as soon as she got into the driver’s seat. Emilienne took off.

  In the corridor of the clinic, she met Dr. Pascal; he avoided her gaze. She could hear screams coming from one of the rooms. Emilienne ran and opened the door to her sister’s room.

  Before her, her mother was trembling and scratching at the tile floor. Four of her nieces and nephews were screaming. Her father and brother-in-law stared, in shock, at Eva’s inert body, bearing a half smile.

  Emilienne threw herself onto her sister. From the other end of the room, she could hear Jean’s muffled voice:

  “Her body couldn’t take to the drip. She died before the doctor got here.”

  Emilienne felt nausea rise up to her mouth as it had every morning for a month. Collapsed on this anonymous bed with immaculate sheets where Eva lay, she held one hand to her belly and with the other caressed her sister’s, inert.

  “I so much would have wanted you to be by my side to attend the birth. I promise you, if it’s a girl, I will give her your first name.”

  Her gaze was lost in the dense foliage of the trees in the courtyard, drenched in a blazing sun. There, in the distance, was a house, her house, which now sat empty.

  Afterword

  CHERYL TOMAN

  Few women writers, if any, have played a more significant role in the development of a national literature than Gabon’s Angèle Rawiri. Although literary history may reveal one woman in particular as the first female novelist of any given country, such pioneering women have traditionally published long after their male counterparts, for a variety of reasons often beyond the woman writer’s control. In countries considered among the first literary “powerhouses” of francophone Africa, such as Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, and Congo, male authors typically were producing critically acclaimed novels nearly two decades earlier than were female novelists. Although the novel in Gabon had a late start if considered alongside comparable works emerging from former French colonies in sub-Saharan Africa, it is nonetheless remarkable that Angèle Rawiri overcame the tremendous obstacles that had challenged her African sisters only thirty years earlier to become not only Gabon’s first published woman writer but, more notably, the first novelist of her country—either male or female—with the initial printing in 1980 of her novel Elonga.

  Indeed, some may find it hard to believe that Gabon, home to renowned genres of epic poetry such as the mvet and the olendé,1 produced no novelists of French expression prior to 1980. Neighboring Cameroon, by comparison, is home to pioneering African francophone writers such as Mongo Beti, who published Ville cruelle (Cruel City, 2013) in 1954 under the pen name of Eza Boto, and Thérèse Kuoh-Moukoury, who has the honor of being the first female novelist of the country— and more important, perhaps, of all of sub-Saharan Africa— with her long-awaited publication of Rencontres essentielles in 1969 (Essential Encounters, 2002). Actual publication dates, however, usually reveal a “history” of African women’s writing as opposed to a “herstory.” The dearth early on of published women novelists in francophone Africa is a result of both a lack of critical interest in and a total ignorance of what these women writers had to say. These early works became part of an “empty canon,” as Irène d’Almeida eloquently expressed it in the introduction to her anthology A Rain of Words (xxii)— empty because “no one has bothered to look inside” (xxiv). Thus, this perceived delay in novelistic creation by African women writers should not be regarded as proof that such early works lacked quality. In fact, many of these early novels have withstood the test of time and consequently are more well-known today than when they were first published. Such is the case with Kuoh-Moukoury’s Rencontres essentielles, a novel that the MLA Texts and Translations Series reprinted in its original French in 2002 for a primarily North American francophone audience while simultaneously introducing its companion volume, Essential Encounters, marking the first time ever in print for its English translation. In francophone Africa and in France, Fureurs et cris de femmes eventually became Angèle Rawiri’s best-known novel of the three she published, and Sara Hanaburgh’s translation in English, The Fury and Cries of Women, is certain to bring long overdue critical acclaim to this novel from English-speaking readers and specialists in African studies with a range of experiences and perspectives, as well as ignite fresh interest in the novel among a new generation of scholars and students in francophone studies. Hanaburgh’s published translation should also heighten interest in the literature of Gabon, whose rich and diverse works arguably deserve the same standing attained by those written in other African francophone countries but that have in the past found themselves within the “empty canon” to which d’Almeida refers.

  The Gabonese novel’s relatively late entry onto the world literary stage may also be explained in part by a lack of a solid infrastructure in the formal education system pre-independence compared to those that were long in place in other former French colonies of sub-Saharan Africa such as Cameroon or Senegal. The first secondary school in Gabon, Lycée National Léon Mba, was not established until 1958, and it remained the only lycée in the country for several years, forcing some Gabonese students to head to Brazzaville for their secondary school education (Mba-Zue 48), and leaving others who had the financial means to do so to continue their studies in France. In the post-independence period, Gabonese nationals who had received higher education and who were determined to return to Gabon were then recruited almost exclusively for political positions, and little emphasis was placed on forming a Gabonese intellectual elite as was done in other African francophone countries (Midiohouan 221). Today, a substantial number of Gabonese women writers are also university professors—Justine Mintsa and Honorine Ngou among them.

  Although times are different, Université Omar Bongo in Libreville, founded in 1970, still remains Gabon’s only university where degrees in literature are awarded, and students who wish to earn the equivalent of a doctorate in literature still need to pursue such studies abroad. Although higher education is certainly not a requirement for being a novelist in any country, rare are authors in francophone Africa who do not at least possess the baccalauréat, the diploma inherited from the French school system marking the completion of secondary school (Mba-Zue 49).2 Considering these realities, one is not surprised that novelists of French expression emerged much later in Gabon.

  Angèle Rawiri’s Personal Journey

  Angèle Ntyugwétondo Rawiri was born on April 29, 1954, in Port-Gentil, the economic capital of Gabon and home to its largest petroleum companies. Port-Gentil has also long been considered Gabon’s epicenter of political opposition, and growing up in such an environment perhaps inspired Rawiri’s rebellious spirit as a novelist. Even though her father, Georges Rawiri, was president of the Gabonese senate in Omar Bongo’s administration,3 this did not deter Angèle from criticizing in her works broken aspects of African political systems. Rawiri did not necessarily point out names, but it was obvious that her fictional African countries and cities often were inspired by real-life experiences in Gabon. It is to be expected that a writer’s homeland influences in some way his or her works, but Rawiri was also generally critical of aspects of African society that are oppressive or corrupt. Thus, her use of the fictional name “Kampana” in The Fury is less about masking Gabon’s identity and more about Rawiri going beyond borders of a homeland similar to others on
the continent. Although the political and social climate of Rawiri’s semifictitious country are important in The Fury, rebelliousness in all of her novels, however, is most evident in the words, actions, and everyday lives of her protagonists.

  Although Rawiri rarely spoke about her private life in public, it is well known that she was greatly affected by her mother’s death when she was just six years old. Her father, himself a published poet in addition to being a government official, naturally moved on with his personal life after his first wife’s death and eventually started another family, and it was said that Angèle suffered profoundly from this, battling feelings of isolation and exclusion from her father’s new life. Traces of these emotional wounds are clear in the way Emilienne’s family interactions are depicted in The Fury. Rawiri’s feelings may have been exacerbated by her separation from her homeland to complete her baccalauréat and postsecondary studies in translation in France. After a short stint as an actress and model in Great Britain, Rawiri returned to her native Gabon and to her hometown of Port-Gentil at the end of the 1970s, where she accepted a position with a major oil company translating and interpreting into English. With the encouragement of her brother, it was during this period that she wrote her two first novels, Elonga and G’amérakano, before leaving Gabon for France definitively and finishing there her third and final published novel, Fureurs et cris de femmes, at the end of the 1980s.

  It is interesting to note that Rawiri published her first two novels under her given Omyènè name, Ntyugwétondo Rawiri, and thus only on the cover of Fureurs was she identified as Angèle Rawiri, having dropped Ntyugwétondo, which translates from Omyènè as “the beloved day.”4 This modification of self-identification may have been a reflection of how Rawiri felt torn between cultures, continents, and families. In a 1988 interview for the African women’s magazine Amina, Rawiri gave the impression that she was never able to rid herself of this sense of alienation, calling herself a “déracinée,” or a woman uprooted, and stating, “I never felt at home on African soil, and at the same time, I didn’t feel at home in Europe either” (Bikindou and Baker 13).5 Writing was obviously cathartic for Rawiri, a means to deal with sentiments of perpetual exile that had plagued her since childhood and a way of coming to terms with aspects of culture and society that escaped her comprehension. Her important but relatively short career as a published novelist lasted just ten years. Although in the aforementioned Amina interview she referred to a manuscript in progress that was to become her fourth novel (16), and while she alluded to material she had written for three others (12), these novels, if completed, were never published. Rather surprisingly, Rawiri disappeared from view seemingly without explanation even while her works continued to gain a fair amount of critical attention well into the 1990s from influential scholars of francophone studies in Europe and North America, such as Jean-Marie Volet and Odile Cazenave, among others. Although Rawiri had been out of the public eye for some time, admirers of her work were particularly shocked to hear of her premature passing in the autumn of 2010 at the age of fifty-six. She was laid to rest in the cemetery at the foot of the Grande Arche de la Défense just outside of Paris.

  Although it may be unrealistic to say that Rawiri encountered no difficulties on her path to becoming Gabon’s first novelist, she undeniably gained unparalleled respect even early on from her fellow Gabonese, and the fact that she was a female author was seemingly not the handicap to her that it had been to her predecessors.6 For thirteen years before the first publication of Rencontres essentielles, potential editors told the Cameroonian writer Thérèse Kuoh-Moukoury, for example, that they preferred the style of writing of the male writers who produced politically charged novels attacking French colonialism to her indirect references to and nuances of a troubled yet historical time. In an era well before the popularization of the Western feminist rallying cry of the late sixties and seventies “the personal is political,” Kuoh-Moukoury had already introduced her subtle but ever-present approach to condemning colonialism and hegemony through her female protagonists, who overcame trials and hardships despite the weight of customary beliefs, practices, and rituals; the realities of colonialism in a changing, conflict-ridden world; and the lack of role models who dared to venture beyond women’s traditional roles. In the period prior to independence from European colonization, this approach did not gain the attention of literary critics, and it was not considered marketable by editors in France, where African francophone novels were being published almost exclusively.

  However, perhaps it was the advances made years earlier by fellow women writers in neighboring countries that allowed Rawiri to become recognized relatively easily in her country as the first novelist despite the publication of an earlier work in Gabon in 1971—a heavily autobiographical fifty-nine-page piece entitled Histoire d’un enfant trouvé (The story of a recovered child) by Robert Zotoumbat. Considered to be Gabon’s first novelist by a significant number of scholars of Gabonese literature (Ambourhouet-Bigmann, “Où est le roman gabonais?” 18; Kassa, “La femme” 27; Mendame), Rawiri distinguished herself from Zotoumbat by writing a work that one of the earliest critics of Gabonese literature, Magloire Ambourhouet- Bigmann, has called the “début de création imaginaire” (“Naissance” 47), or the advent of creative writing in French in Gabon.

  Fortunately, Rawiri was spared the experience of a drawn-out journey to publication, and her work was well-received by many Gabonese intellectuals and scholars from the beginning. As Jean-René Ovono Mendame states, “When Elonga appeared in 198[0],7 Ntyugwétondo Angèle Rawiri’s 261-page novel, the Gabonese public greeted with enthusiasm the zeal of the first woman writer to dedicate herself to writing. The event commanded respect especially during those years when few men, academics or those self-taught, ventured into writing” (2006).

  Angèle Rawiri has had a tremendous impact on African literature in general and was a strong voice in particular amidst her female contemporaries of the 1980s, such as Mariama Bâ, Calixthe Beyala, and Ken Bugul. Recognized as an important figure in the literary history of her country, Rawiri has also been a source of inspiration for numerous women writers in Gabon who have followed in her footsteps, such as Justine Mintsa, Honorine Ngou, Sylvie Ntsame, and Chantal Magalie Mbazoo Kassa. A new generation of Gabonese women authors has grown up reading Rawiri’s novels as part of their general studies, and as a result, her influence is apparent in the works of young writers such as Edna Merey Apinda, Nadia Origo, Mélissa Bendome, Alice Endamne, Charline Effah, and Miryl Eteno following in her footsteps. Considering this solid history of women’s writing in Gabon that began with Angèle Rawiri’s work, it is no surprise that the country’s female novelists are equal in number to their male counterparts,8 a rare finding in any given country.

  The Fury and Cries of Women and Other Writings

  Rawiri’s three novels, Elonga (1980), G’amérakano au carrefour (1983), and Fureurs et cris de femmes (1989), have little connection between them despite the fact that they are often grouped as a “trilogy.”9 Yet a specific aspect of Rawiri’s life resonates in each work in an intriguing way. Rawiri’s first novel, Elonga, is the story of a young male professor, Igowo, who decides to leave Spain, where he has grown up, in order to make a life for himself in the African country of his mother’s birth. Except for some initial tensions with his maternal uncle, it appears that Igowo is doing well for himself; he meets Ziza, a young, dynamic fashion designer, and the couple eventually marries, and their daughter, Igowé, is born. From this point, a series of tragedies in the novel provokes a discussion about the role of witchcraft in African society, the main element driving the narrative. Although the young, modern family denies that their misfortunes can be attributed to evil spirits and the jealousy of others, it nonetheless remains inexplicable why Igowo ends up as the only surviving member, and this only after battling a mysterious, life-threatening illness. Of Rawiri’s three novels, Elonga is perhaps the least focused on women, even though Ziza is clearly the por
trait of the new African woman of the 1980s for whom career and family are both important, if not essential.

  Rawiri takes a more decisive feminist approach in her second novel, G’amérakano, the story of Toula, a dismally paid secretary who, at the encouragement of her mother, undergoes a transformational makeover with the hope of enhancing her physical beauty in order to increase opportunities for wealth and success for herself and her family. Toula eventually becomes the mistress of Éléwagnè, a powerful banker, although her heart is reserved for one of Éléwagnè’s employees, Angwé. Despite the lavish lifestyle Éléwagnè has provided her with, Toula still continues to see the man she loves until Éléwagnè is tipped off and promptly fires Angwé, provoking the young man’s suicide. Toula is also rejected, and her life subsequently crumbles and she is forced to return to a life of poverty, disgrace, and prostitution while grieving the loss of the man she had loved. G’amérakano readily fits the Westernized description of a feminist novel, although it is interesting to note that the Gabonese novelist and scholar Chantal Magalie Mbazoo Kassa reserves the distinction of “feminist novel” exclusively for The Fury. Concerning G’amérakano, Kassa describes the work as one that “emphasizes the problematic relationships between men and women in African society” (28–29). She continues to explain that the word “carrefour,” or “crossroads,” in the full title refers to the complexity of relationships impacted by notions of gender-appropriate roles that often lead to dysfunction within society. Those who refuse to “play the game” and to follow such prescriptions assigned to gender are left to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives. Because Kassa focuses more on the belief that man and woman are complements, and chooses to analyze both genders instead of focusing her analysis solely from a feminist perspective, one understands why Kassa has made this distinction between G’amérakano and The Fury. In Kassa’s view, G’amérakano is more of a critique of society as a whole—where men and women both find themselves in powerless positions, and Toula is the lens through which we see a society in trouble. Kassa emphasizes, “To study woman is to study the society to which she belongs” (12). In direct contrast to certain ideas within Kassa’s analysis, however, Jeanne-Marie Clerc and Liliane Nzé state emphatically in their book Le roman gabonais et la symbolique du silence et du bruit (2008; The Gabonese novel and the symbolism of silence and noise) that certain declarations within G’amérakano smack of “radical American feminism” (263) and that Toula’s words such as “I want to feel my body with every pore of my skin” (176) are indeed “rare in African women’s writing” (263).