What I am reading

Scarlet Song is quite different from Mariama Bâ’s other novel So long a Letter and while I thoroughly enjoyed the latter, I have some issues with this one.

But first things first. Scarlet Song is set in Dakar around the 1960’s and it is the love story between Mireille, the daughter of a French diplomat, and Ousman, son to a poor Senegalese family. One is a man, one a is woman, one is black, one is white, one comes from a rich family, one comes from a very poor family, one was raised according to European standards and norms, the other one to Wolof traditions. Both families resent this interracial relationship for different reasons, but as you can see, there is a lot of potential for conflict.

But surprisingly this is not so much the story of Mireille and Ousman, but of Ousman and especially his mother Yaye Khady. Although the novel shows, that racism goes both ways, Bâ definitely did not write for a European audience since you need at least some basic knowledge of Senegalese / Wolof culture and society (although the translator was kind enough to add some footnotes). The characters (all but Mireille) go back and forth between love, racism, prejudices, tradition and religion, additionally, the novel is sometimes strangely focused on motherhood (since Bâ raised nine children herself, I guess this was a big issue for her).

My main problem with this text was probably that only Yaye Khady as the hellish mother-in-law was believable as a character. Ousmans behaviour in the second and in the third part of the book was quite out of character and completely contradictory to the first part. While his close bonds with his family are understandable, his treatment of Mireille doesn’t make any sense. Mireille on the other hand feels like the embodiment of how Bâ as an African writer imagines a European/French woman to be. For example: it is said a couple of times, that she is rather rational, intelligent and proud, yet she never acts like that, but is only shown as someone who has fallen in love head over heels (once you go black, you never go back, I guess) and who struggles to fit in.

After all, Scarlet Song doesn’t really deal with the issues of an interracial marriage, but with the problems of an intercultural one. While Ousman and Mireille overcome racism and prejudices seemingly without any hassle, religion and traditions set them further and further apart. Again, it just felt less like a story about an actual marriage and more like a tale of Bâ’s idea of such a relationship.