Is a character's name in Segu a reference to another author?

Question

When Tiekoro returned to Segu, he opened a small Koranic school, or zawiya, in the family compound. In a very brief incident (Part IV, chapter 1), one of the students attending the school is explicitly named:

“How many of you have followed the advice I gave you yesterday?” he [Tiekoro] asked.

The class stirred. Obviously no one knew what he meant.

Then Alfa Mande Diarra stood up

“I did, master,” he said. “I wrote the divine name of Allah on the wall opposite my bed so that it would be the first thing I see when I wake up.”

As far as I can see, he is the only student to be explicitly named (apart from Tiekoro's direct relatives), but even so he plays no further role in the story. Is the name given in this brief cameo a tribute, or in-joke, to the Malian author, Alpha Mande Diarra?

Answer 1

Françoise Pfaff, a professor of French at Howard University, published Conversations with Maryse Condé (Entretiens avec Maryse Condé), available for free loan from the Internet Archive, based on a number of informal interviews with Condé between 1991 and 1994. In the third chapter "Segu: Grandeur and Decline of an African Family", Pfaff brings up the naming of some of the characters in Segu:

FP: And you wink at people with some of your characters. You use names of people we both know: the Malian writer Alpha Mande Diarra and the Nigerian filmmaker Ola Balogun...

to which Condé replies:

MC: Yes, I have some fun doing this.

this seems to confirm that the name of the class swot was indeed a "wink" to the Malian author. Similarly, Ola Balogun is a character who appears in the sequel to Segu, The Children of Segu, and is a reference to the Nigerian filmaker.