Frédéric Bruly Bouabré’s “Quatrième Cahier”
This manuscript was digitized in Yopougon in 2009 by Charles L. Riley.
The author wrote the text in 1984, and passed away in 2014. He is known for inventing a pictographic syllabary for the Bété language, and some of it is in use in this work.
The text is a challenging one, and on the surface may be easily dismissed as offensive in its treatment of albinos and race relations. The posting of it here does not constitute endorsement of the views espoused. Bouabré was an artist with strong views, and this work helps to round out the picture of his responsiveness to colonialism and interaction between people of different races as it impacted his life directly.
The parts in Latin script are in French, while the parts in the pictographic script are recorded in the Bété language.