Ousmane's Lack Of Formal Education example essay topic

MikEyBC 01: 13: i guess berry fine 13: do you know any namesMikEyBC 01: i've pretty much read everything there is to readMikEyBC 01: Sembene Ousmane's third novel, God's Bits of Wood, was originally written and published in French as Les Bouts de bois de Dieu. The novel is set in pre-independence Senegal and follows the struggles of the African train workers in three cities as they go on strike against their French employers in an effort for equal benefits and compensation. The chapters of the book shift between the cities of Bamako, Thies, and Dakar and track the actions and growth of the men and women whose lives are transformed by the strike. Rather than number the chapters, Ousmane has labeled them by the city in which they take place, and the character who is the focal point of that chapter. MikEyBC 01: As the strike progresses, the French management decides to 'starve out' the striking workers by cutting off local access to water and applying pressure on local merchants to prevent those shop owners from selling food on credit to the striking families. The men who once acted as providers for their family, now rely on their wives to scrape together enough food in order to feed the families.

The new, more obvious reliance on women as providers begins to embolden the women. Since the women now suffer along with their striking husbands, the wives soon see themselves as active strikers as well. MikEyBC 01: The strategy of the French managers, or as the African workers call them, of using lack of food and water to pressure the strikers back to work, instead crystallizes for workers and their families the gross inequities that exist between them and their French employers. The growing hardships faced by the families only strengthens their resolve, especially that of the women. In fact, some of the husbands that consider faltering are forced into resoluteness by their wives. It is the women, not the men, who defend themselves with violence and clash with the armed French forces.

MikEyBC 01: The women instinctively realize that women who are able to stand up to white men carrying guns are also able to assert themselves in their homes and villages, and make themselves a part of the decision making processes in their communities. The strike begins the awakening process, enabling the women to see themselves as active participants in their own lives and persons of influence in their society. MikEyBC 01: Sembene Ousmane was born in the Casamance region of Senegal in 1923, the son of a fisherman. Ousmane received only three years of formal education, after he was dismissed for striking back at a French teacher who had first struck Ousmane.

Rather than being angered by this incident of retribution, Ousmane's father was pleased that his son had defended his dignity. Editors Samba Gadjigo and Ralph Faulkingham write that this incident that ended Ousmane's school career would presage his efforts to 'reclaim from colonial and neocolonial misrepresentation the reality of an African past and present and to proclaim the dignity, independence, and power of African cultural forms for the continent's future' (Gadjigo and Faulkingham 1). MikEyBC 01: Although he spent time employed as a dock worker and a sharp shooter for the French military in World War II, when Sembene Ousmane began his career as a writer, he was self-taught. Perhaps Ousmane's lack of formal education has also been a lack of formal indoctrination, allowing him to form his own ideology and form career goals that have set him apart from his contemporaries. MikEyBC 01: Ousmane has said that French and English are the only media that allows Africans to communicate with one another (Henry). His decision to publish his work in French was a matter of function, since that was the language with which he felt he could reach the widest African audience.

It was this desire to expand the reach of his ideas that led Ousmane to shift his focus from the written word to the world of film. Ousmane traveled to Moscow and used a scholarship to study filmmaking at the Gorki institute (Guardian). Since the late sixties, Ousmane has primarily created his work in movie form. He is considered to be the father of African film, as his 1966 movie La Noire De / The Black Girl was the first feature length film to be produced in sub-Saharan Africa (Heath).