Storytelling and Play in a Pular Village

In Pular society in southern Senegal, women work in communal groups within the family compound, sharing tasks such as food cultivation and preparation and the supervision of children. The working day is long and the labour can be tedious but, within these groups, the women find time to perform and entertain, telling stories and singing songs that reflect and critique the society in which they live. Storytelling practices outside the griot tradition have been underrepresented in critical literature partly because of the domestic spaces in which they occur but these informal, improvised performances allow storytellers to create and communicate images of themselves that are unseen elsewhere. Taking the Pular village of Temento Samba as a case study, this article examines how women use play to express individual and communal concerns and to suggest actions for potential change.