So Long a Letter | Themes
European vs. African Traditions
As critic John Champagne has pointed out, So Long a Letter is filled with descriptions of the culture clash apparent in 1970s Senegal. Besides the "hybridity" of the novel's form and content, Champagne argues that the novel "combines a European genre—the epistolary novel—with indigenous oral gestures'' and "presents us with a culture irrevocably altered by the colonial presence.’’ Thus, Champagne notes how "one might find in proximity both cowries and Fiats, boubous and night clubs, safara (as the glossary explains, 'liquid with...
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