Epistolary Narration as Healing in Ahdaf Soueif’s the Map of Love and Mariama Ba’s So Long a Letter

The oppression of women in patriarchal contexts across the world and cultures has attracted numerous literary studies. Contemporary literary feminists and writers have countered the positionality of women as marginalized victims through their writings by using strong-willed female characters. These female characters have subverted their marginalized positions through assertion, defiance and other forms of protest. While there has been an increase of creative texts by women featuring these struggles over male-hegemony, few scholarly debates have considered self-narration especially through letters and journals as, not just style, but as a form of healing. This paper examines how epistolary narration pegged on friendship and sisterhood is healing to female characters in patriarchy. The analysis makes textual references from Ahdaf Soueif’s The Map of Love and Mariama Ba’s So Long a Letter. The analysis espouses the views feminist literary theory as propounded by Simone De Beavouir (1949) and Hellen Cixious (1976).