God’s Bits of Wood

God’s Bits of Wood (1960) by Ousmane Sembène is a novel based on actual events surrounding the Senegalese railway workers strike of 1947 and depicts the impact of the poverty and racism endured by the railway workers and their families. Sembène (1923-2007) was a self-educated native of Senegal. While living in Dakar as a young man, he was drafted into the French army; subsequently, he relocated to France, joined the Communist Party, and became a union organizer. His experiences inform this highly detailed, semiautobiographical novel.

Plot Summary

The book is set in both Senegal and Mali. Oppressed by the French colonial railway administrators, the railway workers union seeks to obtain family allowances and pension benefits. The lives of various extended families residing in compounds are explored, and Sembène provides the reader with descriptions of the repercussions of the strike as viewed from the perspective of various male and female characters. While the interactions of the union leaders with one another and their immediate and extended families are explored, it is the viewpoint of Bakayoko, the primary union leader, who is afforded the most attention. Although he does not make a personal appearance until the latter third of the book, the adulation with which he is regarded by the community is described at length.

Juxtaposed with the impoverished shanties in which many of the workers reside is “The Vatican,” a bourgeoisie suburban enclave of ex-patriot French railway administrators. Somewhat besotted with power, most of the managers, especially Isnard, feel that they have devoted their lives to actually improving the lives of the native residents of the area. Both the strikers and the management suffer various hardships as a result of the job action, despite the fact that the families of the workers suffer from deprivation of food and water.

Philosophical and spiritual growth on the part of certain characters is examined at length. Specifically, the increasing power of the previously subjugated women is explored, as initially-reticent characters take a stand in support of their husbands, the strikers. Their three-day march from Thiès to Dakar is the climax of the book, and is in contrast to the male-dominated labor negotiations that preceded it. Archetypal characters such as the blind Maimouna, who often functions at the level of a prophet, and the elder Fa Keita, who implores the triumphant workers to reject murder, hatred, and bitterness, perform didactic functions within the structure of this work.