Xala

So next to a completely INCOMPTENT main character, haha, I feel like Xala is quite an empowering piece through the female eyes. No, it doesn't have women picketing for equal rights or describes the path it takes for women to vote or equal pay, but it gives women a voice that we have not truly seen yet in our class. Women have always just been the background of the plot, the foil that keeps the males who are main characters through their journeys. But in Xala, we area able to see strong women, and women who rarely take any crap from a man. And although the slap of the hand is the price you pay for opening your mouth, we see women who aren't afraid of the physical abuse, because their will is that much stronger.

Take Rama, El Hadji's daughter for example. She is a strong female who goes to school and drives and just empowers herself by forcing her voice into the world. Into the world where men have many wives and hold higher rankings, Rama seems to be not intimidated the least by the surroundings in which is her home. Rama is strong in that she empowers herself in her native tongue, Wolof in which she refuses to speak French, and tells her boyfriend Palthe that he is in trouble when he does. She even refuses to speak to the police officer in French, which gives Rama a revolutionary like complex. She seems to be a bit of a troublemaker, but, at the same time I feel shes quite heroine like because she doesn't break herself under the man or the European captives that have dominated her country for so long.

Rama even takes a hit, literally as she puts a stand against polygamy, refusing to do what her father wishes. Her mother, although apologetic to El Hadji for her daughter's contesting, I think seems to not be so harsh to her because Rama is giving a voice for all the women who sometimes push their voices in the drawer. Rama took in her eyes a strong masculine up-bringing and turned her own empowerment, and I fully congratulate her for it.

Even the second wife, at the end when she is talking to her husband starts fighting for equal rights for her children, she tells El Hadji that her children deserve cars like all the children of his other wives. And she yells and gets angry, and El Hadji breaks with a promise that he will. I did not expect the wives to be so demanding nor did I expect them to speak up to their husbands in a society that is so male-dominated and plus that El Hadji is such a high ranking man in society and the business world, I'd feel he'd be more firm and less taken by all the women around him breaking him down.She even treats him like less than a man when he cannot perform in bed. If that isn't cutting his already barely existent manhood in half, =]

But I guess thats what he gets for techinically having three wives.

And even the women contest a lot against the polgamy, I'm happy that the author choose to give these women a voice and a dominate personality in this piece. I really found it to be quite interesting.