Birago Diop

Writer and storyteller (1906 – 1989)

Family : Place of birth : Ouakam (Dakar) ; Date of birth : 12 December 1906 ; Mother : Sokhna Faty Diawara ; Father : Ismaël Saleh Diop

Education : He studied at the Lycée Cheikh Omar Foutiyou Tall in Saint-Louis (1921–1928), then veterinary medicine at the École nationale vétérinaire de Toulouse (1929–1933); he obtained his diploma in 1934.

Action : He wrote down tales from the oral tradition: Les Contes d’Amadou Koumba (1947), born from the stories of the griot Amadou Koumba, then Les Nouveaux Contes d’Amadou Koumba (1958) and Contes et lavanes (1963). His poetry collection Leurres et lueurs dates from 1960. A veterinarian, he worked throughout French West Africa (Sudan, Côte d’Ivoire, Upper Volta, Mauritania). Close to the Negritude movement, he met Senghor in France. Ambassador of Senegal to Tunisia (1960–1963), he opened a veterinary clinic at Point E, in Dakar, in 1964.

Legacy : He died in Dakar on 25 November 1989. His work helped make African oral literature known and preserved. Contes et lavanes won the Grand Prix littéraire d’Afrique noire.

Sources

• Cairn — « 12 décembre 1906. Birago Diop naît au milieu de l’Afrique des griots »
• B. Diop, Les contes d’Amadou-Koumba (Google Books)
• HAL — « Place et rôle de l’oralité dans la critique littéraire africaniste »
• Wikipédia — Birago Diop

Great voices of Senegalese literature — Birago Diop and Mariama Bâ