Calixthe Beyala (born 1961) is a Cameroonian writer who writes in French. Calixthe Beyala was born into a poor family in Douala, Cameroon. Her older sister raised her and sent her to school. At age 17, she went to France to marry. She finished her baccalaureate in letters. She has two children.
At 23, she wrote her first book. Her writing has received numerous awards and distinctions, and also condemnations for plagiarism; in 1996, she was found guilty of having lifted text from a Howard Buten novel in her book Le Petit Prince de Belleville. Paule Constant, of whose book White Spirit some passages were incorporated into Assèze l’Africaine, has refused to prosecute, in order to avoid giving publicity to Beyala.
Beyala is also engaged in a number of causes: the Collectif Égalité, the fight against AIDS, the promotion of francophonie, the House of the African peoples. She is a member of the sponsoring committee of the French coordination of the Decade for the Promotion of a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World.
Works:
C’est le soleil qui m’a brûlée (1987)
Tu t’appelleras Tanga (1988)
Seul le Diable le savait (1990)
La négresse rousse (1991)
Le petit prince de Bellevile (1992)
Maman a un amant (1993), Grand Prize of Literature of Black Africa
Asséze l’Africaine (1994), François Mauriac Prize of the Académie française
Lettre d’une africaine à ses sœurs occidentales (1995)
Les Honneurs perdus (1996), Grand Prix du roman de l’Académie française
La petite fille du réverbère (1997), Grand Prize of Unicef
Amours sauvages (1999)
Lettre d’une Afro-française à ses compatriotes (2000)
Comment cuisiner son mari à l’africaine (2002)
Les arbres en parlent encore… (2002)
Femme nue, femme noire (2003)
La plantation (2005)
