Ken Bugul is the pen name of Senegalese Francophone novelist Mariètou Mbaye Biléoma. In the Wolof language, her pen name means "one who is unwanted." Since the 1982 publication of her first book, Le baobab fou, a semiautobiographical work in which she confronts her own experiences with immigration, racism, exploitation, sexuality, and substance abuse, Bugul has published ten more novels, each of which takes on an array of pressing social issues in West Africa and beyond.