- Calixthe Beyala
Calixthe Beyala (born 1961) is a
Cameroon ian writer who writes in French.Biography
Calixthe Beyala was born into a poor family in
Douala , Cameroon. Her older sister raised her and sent her to school. At age 17, she went to France to marry. She finished her "baccalaureate" in letters. She has two children.At 23, she wrote her first book. Her writing has received numerous awards and distinctions, and also condemnations for plagiarism; in 1996, she was found guilty of having lifted text from a
Howard Buten novel in her book "Le Petit Prince de Belleville".Paule Constant , of whose book "White Spirit" some passages were incorporated into "Assèze l'Africaine", has refused to prosecute, in order to avoid giving publicity to Beyala.Beyala is also engaged in a number of causes: the "
Collectif Égalité ", the fight againstAIDS , the promotion of "francophonie ", the "House of the African peoples ". She is a member of the sponsoring committee of the French coordination of the "Decade for the Promotion of a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World ".Works
* "C'est le soleil qui m'a brûlée" (1987)
* "Tu t'appelleras Tanga" (1988)
* "Seul le Diable le savait" (1990)
* "La négresse rousse" (1991)
* "Le petit prince de Bellevile" (1992)
* "Maman a un amant" (1993), Grand Prize of Literature of Black Africa
* "Asséze l'Africaine" (1994),François Mauriac Prize of theAcadémie française
* "Lettre d'une africaine à ses sœurs occidentales" (1995)
* "Les Honneurs perdus", Grand Prize for Novel of the Académie française
* "La petite fille du réverbère" (1997), Grand Prize ofUnicef
* "Amours sauvages" (1999)
* "Lettre d'une Afro-française à ses compatriotes" (2000)
* " Les arbres en parlent encore…" (2002)
* "Femme nue, femme noire" (2003)
* "La plantation" (2005)External links
* [http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5874 The Literary Encyclopedia page on Calixthe Beyala]
* [http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/journals/ral/ral33-2.html Article, "Neither Here nor There: Calixthe Beyala's Collapsing Homes" by Ayo Abiétou Coly, from "Research in African Literatures" (33: 2)]Further reading
*Hitchcott, Nicki, "Calixthe Beyala: Performances of Migration" [http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/212910.ctl]
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