Faculty Profile

Samba Diop, assistant professor of French and the first professor hired by the University specifically to teach the literature of the former French colonies, says he hopes to illustrate the cultural complexity of the regions.

"There's this tension between being an African and also having a new Western identity," Diop says.

"I think most African intellectuals relate to some aspect of Samba Diallo," he says, referring to a character in a Senagalese novel who struggles to preserve his African and Muslim heritage while becoming a Parisian intellectual.

Diop, a Muslim Senegalese educated at the Sorbonne in Paris, teaches about French-educated West African authors writing in countries where more than half the population relies on oral tradition and does not speak French.

He was born in 1957, three years before Senegal gained independence from France, into a family that belonged to the French-educated Senegalese elite and the dominant Wolof ethnic group. They lived in the French part of Dakar, which was rare for Africans.

Historically the hub of French colonial activity, Dakar was a mix of modernity and tradition during Diop's childhood. He says he did not question the impact of Western cultures on African tradition until he was older.

He remembers enjoying visits to cultural centers as a teenager to read French newspapers and see Russian films.

Yet like the fictional character he studies, the pressure of maintaining ties to his heritage was a thread that ran throughout Diop's upbringing.

His father, a former mechanical engineer for the French Navy who later ran the biggest concrete factory in West Africa, encouraged his family to preserve Wolof and Muslim traditions.

"You couldn't be too assimilated [into French culture] or you would look bad," Diop says.

His father wore African garb, attended mosque regularly and practiced polygamy, which was valued in Wolof society. He had three wives and 14 children. Diop says it was like having three mothers and he did not consider his full siblings any different from his half siblings.

During the summers, he attended Koran school, where he learned Arabic and the basics of prayer. At 14, he memorized the entire Koran.

Even after the country gained independence, Senegalese schools were dominated by the French system and Diop was taught by French university graduates.

He says he did not experience culture shock when he arrived in France for the first time because the French influence was so pervasive in Senegal.

"If you look all over francophone cities, France is already there," he says.

Interestingly, it was his experience in the West that gave him a new perspective on Africa.

As a graduate student of English at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Diop became more conscious of Senegal's oral tradition while studying medieval English texts, which were originally meant to be transmitted orally.

He remembers that during his childhood, storytellers, or "griots," would spend afternoons with his family, reciting tales from the past as they strummed the "xalam," a traditional African lute.

Diop says the griots have played a crucial role in strengthening the identities of the various ethnic groups in Senegal because they preserve the country's history through oral tradition.

"Francophone literature is really a continuation of oral tradition," Diop says.

Ultimately, his main goal in teaching francophone literature is to dispel stereo-types of Africa.

"I grew up in a big house with running water, heat, electricity, a library," he says. "I got to go to the best schools and all these cultural centers in Dakar."

"The Africa you see on CNN--Rwanda, Ethiopia, that's just a 5 second soundbite," he adds. "That's not all of Africa."