An Interview with Marouba Fall: Premier Senegalese Novelist, Poet and Dramatist
Bibliographic record
Abstract
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Senegalese novelist, poet and dramatist Marouba Fall discusses his latest novel, Betty Allen, in the context of his earlier work. The novel addresses various preconceptions about the nature of Islam and African society as well as different perceptions of the idea of liberty. Tamara-Diana Braunstein (taradina@gmail.com) is a native of New York, she holds a Master's in English and Political Science from the University of Freiburg, and currently teaches English at the West African College of the Atlantic in Dakar in the Republic of Senegal. This interview was conducted in French at the Centre Culturel Francais in Dakar, Senegal on 3 June 2008. Q: Betty Allen was published in 2007, yet 9/11 is a major theme in the novel. Why write this book at this time? A: I got the idea for the book much earlier, when I first traveled to Quebec in 2001. I wanted to address some of the questions preoccupying the world today, from the war in Iraq to the importance of diversity, and I also wanted to correct some misunderstandings about Islam. Sadly, since 9/11, there has been a tendency for people to equate followers of Islam with terrorists, and that is not the case: our religion is one of peace and of tolerance, emphatically not one that preaches violence. That is why you will notice that the novel both opens and closes with a prayer for peace. Q: The story of Betty Allen is recounted in the first person. To what extent do you identify with your narrator? A: The story--probably 75% of it--is based on real events that happened to me, so of course I do identify with the narrator to a large extent. Everything that happened in Morocco is true (including the story of the flower that was given to me and the poem that I composed immediately thereafter), but everything that happened in Canada is invented. I also like to use the first person singular in order to create intimacy with the reader. Q: You seem to have intimate knowledge of the various settings in your novels. Can you tell us a bit more about this? A: In my novels, it is very important to me to describe what I know. Realistic descriptions and verisimilitude are key, which is why I use events I have actually experiences, places I know well, such as the area in which I grew up, or the school in which I taught for many years. I am one of the nation's best-known writers because people feel instinctively that the place I write about is truly Senegal. That is what we have missed for so long, you see: a realistic image of ourselves. Q: That's right, in Betty Allen you have that hilarious scene in which one character tells one ignorant woman that Africans enjoy feasting on human flesh. A: This conversation actually did take place, by the way! An acquaintance from Mali said this to a young German girl. There are so many preconceived notions about Africa; people elsewhere still see us as living in huts. It is important to understand that times have changed: we are now in the 21st century, we can feel at home in business suits as well as in boubous and we are extremely diverse and multicultural. Q: You said earlier that with globalization, we have all become citizens of the world, meaning that we share the same culture, read the same books, etc. Who are the authors you would say have influenced you most? A: Without a doubt the French classical playwrights, of course. I particularly love Racine, and I can recite entire passages of Corneille's Le Cid off by heart. I like Giraudoux, too. The French poets I love best are Hugo, Baudelaire and Rimbaud, and, among the philosophers, it would have to be Sartre. As for my fellow Senegalese, Senghor appears often in my work as my way of acknowledging my debt to him, and in terms of theater, it is perhaps Aime Cesaire who has exerted the greatest influence upon me. …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.020 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.016 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".