Khan, Mariama (1977 -)

Great women have achieved great things and it makes one think of the Margaret Yourcenars, the Florence Mahoneys, the Aminata Sow Faals and the Mariama Bas. They have inscribed their names on the golden stone of literary art and lived through eternity. Thats how one thinks of Ms Mariama Khan.

Mariama Khan is a God’s creation very hard to describe, for here is a lady that for the first time, left an indelible mark in the history of Gambian literature. If you meet Mariama Khan before reading her poems, you might honestly wonder if such a young, friendly and so quiet a lady could produce poems quite unique in style and monstrous in beauty and richness. If you read her poems before meeting her, you will wonder which genius has intricated such bewildering work of art in which all colours are extraordinarily represented. Mariama Khan has finally compiled all her poems into a collection, that will please both the old and the young, the loving and the caring, the mother as well the father, the child and the adolescent, the rich aristocrat and the poor, the teacher and the student, the reader and the writer, the angered and the sad, and most of all, the questioner of human nature.
Mariama Khan is a Gambian who has won several writing competitions. She published various works in newspapers and Magazines in the Gambia. Some of her poems have also been published in Canada, in the Naswaak Review, a Canadian journal of literary works.”
Born in Brikama Newtown in July 1977 to parents of both Senegalese and Gambian origins, Mariama made it through the same school system like every Gambian and sees herself at St Joseph High in Banjul in 1991. She eventually did her A’ levels at St Augustine’s High. In 1998, for a BA in International Development Studies and English at the St Mary’s University of Halifax, she graduated in 2001. She has served in the Gambian Civil Service as Information/Press/Publicity officer with the Department of Information Services in Banjul, and she was a Communication Officer at the Women’s Bureau before leaving for Boston, the USA where she is doing her Masters in Media studies and Film. She has two beautiful boys: Omar and Muhammad.
Mariama’s talents as a poet were just remarked at the Extension program of the St Mary University when she started publishing on the papers. Her beautiful use of language and vocabulary made her poems precise and bulky in meaning. She has gone through a lot of struggle to publish her collection of poetry entitled Futa Toro. Since, she has co-published with her brother, Bamba Khan, Juffureh: Kissing You With Hurting Lips and Proverbs From The Senegambia.

Books:

Futa Toro

Juffureh: Kissing You with Hurting Lips

Proverbs of the Senegambia