Paper short abstract:

Malian and Tuareg writer, Zakiyatou Oualett Halatine, provides us with a rare look at the desert region of Northern Mali from a feminine and feminist perspective through stories she has written in exile for her collection, Desert Passions, which serves as a preserver of memory and identity.

Paper long abstract:

Malian and Tuareg writer, Zakiyatou Oualett Halatine, provides us with a rare look at the desert region of Northern Mali from a feminine and feminist perspective through stories she has written in exile. In 2013, Halatine was forced to flee a conflict that rages on in Mali to this day, and her work, Desert Passions, became a way to reconstruct memory and identity through the retelling of both a region so vastly misunderstood and the history of her people who bear the brunt of the blame for Mali’s divisions. In any war, women and children suffer the most, and Halatine’s stories have a focus on the suffering of Tuareg women who nonetheless work tirelessly as keepers of a desert culture and builders of a community. Halatine’s stories help define Tuareg identity and preserve memory of a people so often misunderstood. Halatine’s writings are unique in a corpus of Malian literature mostly generated by Southern Malian authors. She is in many ways the lone literary voice of the Malian desert known for her original style which infuses untranslatable Tamashek words and phrases into her text written in French. Her use of Tamashek is preserved as well in the English translation of the work. Her book is a fusion of contemporary creative writing and a retelling of Tuareg legends that define her desert people. This presentation analyzes various stories included in Desert Passions that dare to rewrite history from a Tuareg woman’s perspective, a voice that until now has been virtually ignored.