Bio

Dr. Jeanne Garane is a professor of French and Comparative Literature in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of South Carolina. She has published three book-length translations from French to English: Abdourahman Waberi's The Land Without Shadows (Virginia, 2005), Daniel Picouly’s The Leopard Boy (Virginia, 2016), and Amadou Hampâté Bâ’s Amkoullel, the Fula Boy (Duke, 2021).

Project Description

To support the translation of the memoir At Your Service, Commandant! by Malian writer Amadou Hampâté Bâ from French. Bâ (1901-91) was a celebrated Malian writer, historian, translator, and ethnographer who worked to preserve and document the cultures of his region when they were threatened by French colonialism. At Your Service, Commandant! combines memoir, Indigenous ethnography, and travel writing to create a vivid portrait of the colonies of French Sudan and Upper Volta between 1922-1942. The work is the sequel to Bâ's memoir Amkoullel, the Fula Boy, and recounts Bâ’s experiences as a young African civil servant working in the newly formed French colony of Upper Volta. The title, At Your Service, Commandant! refers to the mandatory reply that African civil servants had to give when interacting with the French colonial administrators known as “commandants.”