In 2022, I uncovered a forgotten poem by the Senegalese novelist Mariama Bâ, author of the foundational feminist novel So Long a Letter. Bâ’s lost poem records her experiences at the 1977 Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC), held in Lagos, Nigeria. For the past several years I have been working to translate and promote this text as well as Bâ’s other unknown early writings. My translation and introduction appeared in PMLA in October 2023 as “FESTAC… Memories of Lagos.” The discovery was covered by a variety of media outlets devoted to African literatures, including Brittle Paper. I also contributed a post to PMLA‘s blog on the archival research that led to the poem’s reappearance.

Following the republication of Bâ’s “Memories of Lagos”, I edited a cluster of essays on her poem that appeared as a special “Theories and Methodologies” section of the October 2024 issue of PMLA . The contributors include Tsitsi Ella Jaji, Annette Joseph-Gabriel, Ainehi Edoro-Glines, Merve Fejzula, Grace Musila, and Stéphane Robolin. The cluster also includes my introduction; an interview I conducted with Mame-Coumba Ndiaye, Mariama Bâ’s daughter and biographer (also available in French); and another essay of mine that introduces readers and teachers of Bâ to the broader and still unknown archive of her pre-Letter writings.

I am currently working with colleagues at the Équipe Manuscrits francophones (ITEM, CNRS, France) and the Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines of the Université Cheikh Anta Diop (Senegal) to establish a research group dedicated to the cataloguing, study, and preservation of Bâ’s published and unpublished writings.