Hemley Boum

Hemley Boum (born 1973) is a Cameroonian novelist. She has received a number of notable awards for her novels, including the Grand prix littéraire d'Afrique noire, the Prix Les Afriques [fr] and the Prix Ahmadou-Kourouma. Her novels have been translated into Dutch and English. Quotes "The Maquisards" addresses the struggle of Cameroonians for true, complete, and lasting independence. The book adopts this perspective from the point of view of ordinary people, recounting the long battles of the men and women who courageously and resolutely engaged in this relentless fight. I revisit the customs and traditions of these communities, their spirituality, and their social organization. It's an opportunity to give life and voice to those who deserve their rightful place in our collective memory. Interview response to the question ' If you had to summarize your novel “Les maquisards” differently from what appears on its back cover, what would you say?' I wanted to study my characters in all their human, spiritual, and sociological complexity; to do this, I needed to ground them in a culture. I chose a single location, the Bassa forest, to house my characters. The Bassa country thus becomes a metaphor for all the villages, all the peoples, the entire country. In fact, that's how the book has been received, and I'm delighted. Readers from the Bamileke, Douala, Beti…and even from outside the country have told me how moved they were by reading *The Maquisards*. Interview response to the question 'Why set the story only in Bassa country? You're going to make some people jealous.' My sole commitment as a novelist is to express myself without taboo, with complete freedom. I know that words, public speech, bind the person who utters them. My ideas and biases are very clearly expressed in my work. In that sense, yes, I am committed. This book addresses several difficult questions: the terrible silence, the necessary question of the duty to remember, and the use we choose to make of this past, both terrible and glorious. Interview response to the question 'Can we say that this is a politically engaged work? I mean, is there a political, ideological, societal or historical message underlying it' I want to reiterate that this war could not have been fought without the participation of women. Traditional societies, particularly Bassa society, were organized in this way. Women held a sphere of power that belonged solely to them. The Ko'o, which I describe in "The Maquisards," is an order of priestesses, the feminine aspect of the Mbog. A battle of this magnitude could not have taken place without women joining forces alongside men, just as they did daily in their societies. When Mpodol was killed, women were with him. They were part of his inner circle. They risked their lives just as much as the men. It was a matter of restoring them to their rightful place alongside their comrades in arms. For history, but also as an example. For us Cameroonians today, it is important to understand that our fathers AND our mothers answered the call to this historic event. Interview response to the question 'Despite Ruben Um Nyobé's strong presence in this novel, women manage to find a place within it. I would even say that they occupy the main role, which is unprecedented in the texts we have on the subject of the struggle for independence. Did you wish to redress an inequality?' I write the literature I love, an intimate literature that gets as close as possible to people to express human turmoil, the small victories of everyday life, and also what Dickens called "Great Expectations." The small, seemingly insignificant stories of love, friendship, jealousy, betrayal, and loyalty—our ordinary lives—are the very fabric of History. It's not right that this should disappear behind important dates, battles won or lost, street names that evoke only heroes. Here, in "The Maquisards," we grapple with characters we know intimately, whom we hate or with whom we identify, but none of them are strangers to us. This is the literature I love, a kind of dialogue of soul to soul where even the worst characters possess a humanity. Interview response to the question 'We notice that you have remained faithful to fan-shaped writing, it never leaves you!' When the "Lire à Douala" association, represented by Christian Wanguè, asked me to be the patron of this event, I immediately jumped at the chance, so much do I love this city. I fell head over heels in love with literature in Douala, and that affection has never left me. Douala has allowed me to develop a certain perspective on the world: a sense of self, a framework, an anchor that makes me feel at home everywhere, because I come from somewhere. I will never be an exile, because I am a traveler: someone who leaves of her own free will and returns whenever she pleases. I owe this freedom to this city. Returning here for "Lire à Douala" was a natural choice. Interview response to the question 'Let's talk now about the reading event in Douala. Why did you agree to be its patron? I imagine you're in high demand…' Reading is a matter of sensitivity, curiosity, and openness to the world. I would never say that reading makes you a better person: let's be frank, scholars and intellectuals tend to be arrogant and condescending towards those who know less. Nevertheless, the love of reading is a grace, a journey without moving. Books have taught me, moved me to tears, made me laugh out loud, all alone, in a crowded room, on a train, who knows? Alone? No, in the company of characters who spoke only to me, whom someone else had conceived and crafted so that they would speak only to me. Books have informed me about myself and taught me to trust my intelligence to understand the world. Reading is essential, as essential as the air we breathe. Boko Haram means "Forbidden Book," and today more than ever, confronted and attacked as we are by this murderous obscurantism, reading becomes in itself an act of resistance. Interview response to the question 'What could you say to young Africans in general and young Cameroonians in particular to encourage them to read?' It's a real tragedy that books are so expensive and there are so few libraries. I don't have any easy solutions. For my own books, I always negotiate with the publisher to get a much lower price in Cameroon than elsewhere, but it's not a sustainable solution. Ideally, we would have a local publisher who could reprint the books at a lower cost for the local market. I'm very interested in this kind of solution. Interview response to the question 'As you are surely aware, obtaining a book like yours remains a challenge for young Africans living there. What could be done to improve this situation?' External links Category:1973 births Category:Living people Category:Writers Category:Novelists Category:Women writers