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God's Bits of Wood

by Ousmane Sembène

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What is the significance of race, gender, and class in God's Bits of Wood?

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Race, gender, and class issues figure prominently into God's Bits of Wood by Ousmane Sembène. Race appears in the struggle between white French owners/colonizers and Black African workers. Class struggles are prominent between the desperately poor workers and the comfortable and complacent owners and managers. Gender takes center stage as the wives of workers enter into the struggle for a better life.

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Issues of race, gender, and class stand at the heart of Ousmane Sembène's novel God's Bits of Wood. The story centers around the 1947–48 railroad strikes in West Africa and the efforts of workers there to attain better treatment and higher pay.

Race becomes an issue because during this period, the French are still in charge of their West African colonies and of the railroads. This leads to racial difficulties between the white owners and managers and the Black workers. The French are all too willing to exploit their workers simply because of their race, for they view them as inferior. The workers who become strikers, however, have had enough of such treatment and are ready to fight for their rights as human beings.

Class is also at the heart of the conflict, for the workers are legitimately and dramatically poor. They can hardly survive on their wages, and their towns are no more than slums with "rickety shacks" and "rotting fences." These people often lack the basic necessities of life even though they work hard. The owners and managers, however, and those associated with them, live comfortable lives and look down upon the common working people.

Gender, too, plays into the novel when the wives of the workers/strikers take a share in their struggle for a better life. In fact, they make the fight their own and actually organize their own march to Dakar to protest the oppression, exploitation, and injustice that have plagued their families for so long. These women become leaders in their communities as they join their husbands in fighting for a better life.

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