Ousmane Sembène
Early literary career

Sembène taught himself to read and write in French. He drew on many of his life experiences in his debut novel, Le Docker Noir, written in French (1956, later published in English as The Black Docker). This was the story of Diaw, an African stevedore who faces racism and mistreatment on the docks at Marseille. Diaw writes a novel, which is later stolen by a white woman and published under her name. When he confronts her, he accidentally kills her. He is tried and executed in scenes highly reminiscent of Albert Camus 's The Stranger (1942, also translated as The Outsider).

Though Sembène focuses particularly on the mistreatment of African immigrants, he also details the oppression of Arab and Spanish workers. He demonstrates that the issues concern xenophobia as much as they do race. This is written in a social realist mode, as was much of his subsequent fiction. His debut marked the beginning of Sembène's literary reputation. The success of this novel provided enough financial return so that he could continue writing.

Sembène's second novel, O Pays, mon beau peuple! (Oh country, my beautiful people!, 1957), tells the story of Oumarf. He is an ambitious black Senegalese farmer who returns to his native Casamance with a new white wife and ideas for modernizing the area's agricultural practices. Oumar struggles against both the French colonial government and the village social order, and he is eventually murdered. O Pays, mon beau peuple! was an international success, and Sembène received invitations from around the world, particularly from Communist countries such as China, Cuba, and the Soviet Union.

Sembène's third and most famous novel is Les Bouts de Bois de Dieu (God's Bits of Wood, 1960); most critics consider it his masterpiece, rivaled only by Xala. The novel is a fictional treatment of the railroad strike on the Dakar-Niger line, which lasted from 1947 to 1948. Though the charismatic and brilliant union spokesman, Ibrahima Bakayoko, is the most central figure, the novel has no true hero except the community itself. The people band together in the face of hardship and oppression to assert their rights. Accordingly, the novel features nearly fifty characters in both Senegal and neighboring Mali, showing the strike from all possible angles. In this, the novel is often compared to Émile Zola 's Germinal.

Sembène followed Les Bouts de Bois de Dieu with the short fiction collection Voltaïque (Tribal Scars, 1962). The collection contains short stories, tales, and fables, including " La Noire de... " which he would later adapt as his first film. In 1964, he released l'Harmattan (The Harmattan), an epic novel about a referendum for independence that takes place in an African capital.

From 1962 to 1963, Sembène studied filmmaking for a year at Gorky Film Studio, Moscow, under Soviet director Mark Donskoy. Also studying there was Sarah Maldoror, a French-Guadeloupean artist who became the first woman to make a feature film in Africa.
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