Quote by Mariama Bâ: “The word 'happiness' does not have the same meaning for all people.”

Happiness is not a single thing that everyone reaches through the same path. What fulfils one person — family, tradition, security — may suffocate another. Bâ is pushing back against the idea that there is one correct way to live, especially one imposed on women by societies that define their happiness for them.

So Long a Letter was published in 1979, during a period of active debate in Senegal and across West Africa about women's rights, polygamy, and the relationship between Islamic tradition and feminist demands. Bâ was involved in Senegalese women's organisations and her novel was a literary intervention into live political debates.

Senegalese novelist and feminist who gained international recognition with her 1979 epistolary novel So Long a Letter, which won the first Noma Award for Publishing in Africa. The novel depicted the lives of two Senegalese women confronting polygamy and social expectations in post-independence Senegal. She died in 1981 before seeing the global impact of her work.