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Honoris Causa » Ken Bugul » Laudatio
Ken Bugul, the Wolof pseudonym of Mariétou Mbaye Biléoma, was born in 1947 in Ndoucoumane, a former region in western Senegal. He made his debut in literature in 1982 with his fictionalized autobiography, Le baobab fou.
As an author, Ken Bugul has published eleven novels, most of them translated into several languages. The daughter of an 85-year-old polygamous marabout and a young Senegalese woman, she was raised in a polygamous family where her siblings were considerably older than her. At the age of five, she was separated from her mother, and the incomprehension of this abandonment and disconnection from her family haunted her throughout her childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, the moment she began to write.
After completing primary school in his village, he continued his studies at the Malick-Sy Lycée in Thiès, after which he entered what is now known as the Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar. His academic brilliance opened doors for him, and he obtained a scholarship to study in Belgium, a period during which he experienced the West he had studied, read, and talked about so much. That longed-for place, which his colonial education presented to him as his own, as the land of his "Gaul ancestors." His time in Belgium, recounted in Le baobab fou, was as complex as it was devastating; this was followed by another time in France, thanks to a scholarship at the National Institute of Audiovisual in Paris. His experiences in that country are recounted in Cendres et braises, in which so many other experiences turned his stay into hell and ultimately pointed to the only possible path to survival: returning home.
In the early 1980s, Mère Mbaye, known as "Mother Mbaye," as her loved ones call her, returned to Senegal for a time. There, she once again faced the conflict between two realities. Her neighbors and relatives treated her as an outcast, and her own mother was ashamed of her for having returned from Europe without any apparent success. During that time, she met an 85-year-old marabout, whom she married as his twenty-eighth wife. This marriage rehabilitated her socially and brought her a certain stability and inner peace. A few months later, her husband died, and later, she married a doctor in Benin, with whom she had a daughter.
It was on this return to her native country that she began to write. And she wrote and wrote... and the manuscript arrived at Nouvelles Éditions Africaines. It was so groundbreaking, so irreverent, so 'unsuitable' for a woman, an African woman, a Black woman, that the publisher decided to publish it, but under a pseudonym. Thus, it was the eternal feeling of abandonment that led her to adopt the pseudonym she uses to sign her works, Ken Bugul, which in the Wolof language means "personne n'en veut" or "the one nobody wants."
Between 1986 and 1993, she worked as an international civil servant in several African countries, including Kenya, Congo, and Togo, managing family planning programs for an international non-governmental organization, leading the organization's African regional section. She traveled the world, participating in various training sessions and giving lectures on development, family planning, and the rights of women and girls.
Since 1994, she has devoted herself primarily to writing, combining her writing with the organization of workshops in disadvantaged communities, where she promotes therapeutic writing and rehabilitation. She also supports the dissemination of local arts and crafts.
Ken Bugul has overcome multiple challenges and developed a worldview with a rare freedom. She conveys to those around her a profound love of life, and her writing is shaped by the separation from her mother during her childhood. Her views on topics such as African tradition, feminism, economic development, and North-South relations have been forceful and often controversial. Her clarity about the human condition and humorous narrative style have established her as a leading figure in African literature. In Africa, where her work has generated everything from controversy to respect, Ken Bugul has earned a place as a pivotal voice. His life and his work are intimately connected, and in his internationally known autobiographical trilogy, composed of Le Baobab fou (his childhood, leaving his homeland and encountering the West), Cendres et braises (his adult experience in the West) and Riwan ou le chemin de sable (the return to his roots, healing at home) he recounts, openly and with unusual boldness, different moments of his existence.
Ken Bugul writes in French, the language of her colonial upbringing, and has not felt the need to write in Wolof, her mother tongue, because, she believes, French is her tool, the one that has allowed her to reach a wider audience, a Western audience to whom she is, in a sense, addressing herself. However, her works are inhabited by voices in the Wolof language, references to Senegalese concepts and realities, African popular beliefs, and local practices, among others. In this way, Ken Bugul's writing is both a means of personal catharsis and a tool for analyzing and critiquing African and Western realities.
On several occasions, she has described how colonization divided Senegalese society into three classes: Westerners, the assimilated, and the indigenous people, to which she belonged. The indigenous people, as Bugul explains, were forced to imitate the mentality of the colonizers without receiving any of their privileges. These experiences profoundly shaped her sense of identity and led her to question the inequalities and cultural domination she suffered.
Ken Bugul is one of the most important writers on the African continent, and her work offers a fascinating insight into the human condition, exile, and the search for a place in the world and an identity, making her not only an African writer, but a universal one.
Furthermore, its humanistic approach, with a critical view of social and cultural structures, demonstrates a firm commitment to human rights, equality between men and women, and the dignity of the marginalized, as well as a powerful and necessary vision that engages with global concerns.
This commitment is reflected in every aspect of her life and work, and is perfectly aligned with the values our institution upholds. Her fight for social justice and giving a voice to African women, as well as her critical analysis of power structures and inequalities, make her a tireless defender of fundamental rights, values that the ULL actively promotes.
Furthermore, Ken Bugul's extensive and renowned literary career has had a significant international impact, establishing her as one of the leading voices in contemporary African literature. For all these reasons, this writer represents a figure who will not only bring great prestige to our university but will also strengthen the ULL's commitment to Senegal, and by extension to the neighboring African continent and its diasporas. This commitment has been firm for decades, successfully maintained through not only academic and scientific projects, but also cooperation and development projects that the various researchers, departments, and faculties of this university have carried out and continue to carry out with the neighboring country.
For all these reasons, the appointment of Ken Bugul, Mariètou Mbaye Biléoma, to the University of La Laguna faculty as an Honorary Doctor, will strengthen the cultural and academic ties between our institution and the African continent, a twin territory of great importance to both the Canary Islands and the ULL, thereby consolidating our role as leaders and promoters of cultural and social dialogue that aspires to a more just, egalitarian, and supportive future.
Dulce María González Doreste and Alba Rodríguez García
