God's Bits of Wood (African Writers Series)

Rating:
Summary: Railway Workers United in 1940's French West Africa
Review: "God's Bits of Wood" is a well written novel about a 1947 strike on the Dakar-Niger railway (a real historical event). The story is seen through the eyes of the workers, their families, and railway management. Sembene Ousmane is both a novelist and film director, and his writing style might be called cinematic. Even in translation, this is a vivid depiction of Senegal (its various ethnic groups and their cultures), colonial Africa, and a struggle for worker's rights.

Rating:
Summary: Not really that long ago....
Review: "God's Bits of Wood", which turns out to be what the women of this seiged west african community call their newborn children, is a vivid and well written novel detailing a strike of african railroad workers around 1947. The French controlled the entire western part of Africa at this point and had established a stronghold of French Colonialism based out of Dakar on the west coast of Africa. The problem getting supplies and such to their more eastern regions. The west african railroad was built to allow them to do this. Workers were virtually enslaved natives. This novel concentrates on the entire sequence of events surrounding the workers revolt particularly emphasizing the role of the women in the upkeep of the workers families during this time.

Rating:
Summary: Railway Workers United in 1940's French West Africa
Review: "God's Bits of Wood" is a well written novel about a 1947 strike on the Dakar-Niger railway (a real historical event). The story is seen through the eyes of the workers, their families, and railway management. Sembene Ousmane is both a novelist and film director, and his writing style might be called cinematic. Even in translation, this is a vivid depiction of Senegal (its various ethnic groups and their cultures), colonial Africa, and a struggle for worker's rights.

Rating:
Summary: Not really that long ago....
Review: "God's Bits of Wood", which turns out to be what the women of this seiged west african community call their newborn children, is a vivid and well written novel detailing a strike of african railroad workers around 1947. The French controlled the entire western part of Africa at this point and had established a stronghold of French Colonialism based out of Dakar on the west coast of Africa. The problem getting supplies and such to their more eastern regions. The west african railroad was built to allow them to do this. Workers were virtually enslaved natives. This novel concentrates on the entire sequence of events surrounding the workers revolt particularly emphasizing the role of the women in the upkeep of the workers families during this time.

Rating:
Summary: Well worth a read
Review: Gives an amazing portrait of Senegal and the tumultous forces shaping it in the mid-twentieth century.

Rating:
Summary: A gem of African Literature by the Father of African Film
Review: Sembene Ousmane's third novel, God's Bits of Wood, was originally written and published in French as Les Bouts de bois de Dieu. The novel is set in pre-independence Senegal and follows the struggles of the African trainworkers in three cities as they go on strike against their French employers in an effort for equal benefits and compensation. The chapters of the book shift between the cities of Bamako, Thies, and Dakar and track the actions and growth of the men and women whose lives are transformed by the strike. Rather than number the chapters, Ousmane has labeled them by the city in which they take place, and the character who is the focal point of that chapter.

As the strike progresses, the French management decides to "starve out" the striking workers by cutting off local access to water and applying pressure on local merchants to prevent those shop owners from selling food on credit to the striking families. The men who once acted as providers for their family, now rely on their wives to scrape together enough food in order to feed the families. The new, more obvious reliance on women as providers begins to embolden the women. Since the women now suffer along with their striking husbands, the wives soon see themselves as active strikers as well.

The strategy of the French managers, or toubabs as the African workers call them, of using lack of food and water to pressure the strikers back to work, instead crystallizes for workers and their families the gross inequities that exist between them and their French employers. The growing hardships faced by the families only strengthens their resolve, especially that of the women. In fact, some of the husbands that consider faltering are forced into resoluteness by their wives. It is the women, not the men, who defend themselves with violence and clash with the armed French forces.

The women instinctively realize that women who are able to stand up to white men carrying guns are also able to assert themselves in their homes and villages, and make themselves a part of the decision making processes in their communities. The strike begins the awakening process, enabling the women to see themselves as active participants in their own lives and persons of influence in their society.

This book is wonderful yet sadly under-appreciated. Ousmane's handling of issues such as the politics of language, indigenous resistence, the cultural costs of forced industrialization, and the changing role of women really has the power to change the way people think. And yet, maybe the book's reach and resonance are the reasons that God's Bits of Wood is not widely read and taught in schools.

Rating:
Summary: Artistically masterful, politically profound.
Review: Truly one of my favorite novels. Sembene Ousmane vigorously engages the complex politics of post-colonial revolutionary struggle, while maintaining a humanistic artistic base of pure poetry. Also, Sembene Ousmane is one of a precious few male authors who creates dynamic, thinking, feeling female characters. Read this book--it's a gem.