Dr. Pascale Abadie completed her PhD in the department of Romance Languages at the University of Cincinnati in March 2014. Her dissertation, “Vers de nouveaux horizons dans la littérature Subsaharienne de Mariama Bâ à nos jours” studied how Sub-Saharan women authors have been writing since the 70s, it was with Mariama Bâ and her novel "So long a letter" that African women's literature finally became recognized as a genre. Bâ’s novel, published in 1979, has inspired many women to write about the conditions of African women in a patriarchal society. Her dissertation traces the evolution of themes, language and style in Sub-Saharan African women writers from different parts of Africa, as well as that of contemporary writers in exile. Authors such as Angèle Rawiri, Ken Bugul, Calixthe Beyala, Fatou Diome, Véronique Tadjo and Werewere Liking have changed the landscape of African Francophone Literature by bringing to their readers’ attention longstanding chauvinism and oppression in African societies. In more recent texts, women writers have developed a new literary aesthetics, recounting their African experience from within and without the African continent.
