SOURCE: Austen, Ralph A. “Amadou Hampaté Bâ: From a Colonial to a Postcolonial African Coice: Amkoullel, l'enfant peul.”¹ Research in African Literatures 31, no. 3 (fall 2000): 1-12.

In the following essay, Austen explains that Bâ stands out among his African contemporaries because he is one of the only authors who has lived the colonial experience and reproduced it in his works, and thus his works provide an insight into how African scholars and writers have found their voice, both as participants and recorders of the colonial experience as creators of their own tradition, in the postcolonial era.

In our broad use of the term “postcolonial” to characterize contemporary African culture, there is an implicit understanding that the colonial experience played a critical role in shaping the identity of societies that emerged from extensive periods of European rule. We can trace such an impact directly through a great variety of written...