Xala

I must admit Xala was a very interesting novel. I was actually excited to read the whole book through. It was interesting to read about how polygamy was during that time. I've always known polygamy is when a man has more than one wife. I enjoyed reading in depth the conflicts that acually existed within the family. The relationships between the children was crazy because they chose on their own not to associate with one another. Another thing that caught my attention was how often El Hadji's first two wives had seen each other within a 17 year period. It was a surprise because most polygamist families I've heard about either live together or in the same area. Aleast that's how I would think it would be.

Rama is one character that I enjoyed. I like that fact that she was so outspoken about what she believed. She was sort of a sassy character to me. One of the parts that I remember most about her is when she told her father she wasn't going to the wedding. Even though he slapped her, she stood firm on what she believed. Yay Bineta was another character that was interesting. I don't know if it was just me, but I thought she was kind of annoying. She was always in the middle of things between El Hadji and N'Gone. I did wonder why she was cursed I could have just over read it.

One thing that I found funny about the whole novel, is how everyone knew about El Hadji's Xala. It's like everyone knew about it, it sure didn't take long for that news to spread. I guess because of the so called El Hadji held, that's what made the news of his Xala so important. That was another thing that was interesting about polygamy back then, the more wives you had the more you were respected. One quote that shocked me was when El Hadji's second wife was thinking about divorcing him. She said "without a man's help a woman has to fall back on prostitution to live and bring up her children." It's like women back then couln't survive without a man, so they all had that same mindset. I don't know why but for some reason would have even thought that prostitution happened back then.