Marie-Claire Matip

Marie-Claire-Eléonore-Débochère Matip (born 1938) is a Cameroonian writer living in Paris.

The daughter of a tribal leader, she was born in Eséka; her father had about fifty children from several different mothers. She was schooled at home at first and then attended school locally. Then, she studied at a college for girls in Douala, where she wrote her novel Ngonda. In 1956, she won a contest sponsored by Elle magazine and Air France that allowed her to travel to France; she returned the following year. In 1958, she studied for her baccalauréat at the Lycée Général Leclerc in Yaoundé. She then studied arts and theology at the University of Montpellier and philosophy, psychology and sociology at the Sorbonne, receiving a doctorate from the latter institution.

Matip set up a radio program Les beaux Samedis for young Cameroonians and served as its host.

She married and had five children, including her eldest daughter Maa Tejomayee Devi ( born Esther Dobong’Na Essiene and also known as Estha Divine, Esta, and Mataji) who is also a Singer, Musician and Spiritual Guide and Healer Master, KRIYA Yoga and SURYA Yoga Practitioner and teacher, the French performer Princess Erika., her late daughter Eva ( known as Sister Hewan) and her youngest daughter Elga.

Her autobiographical novel Ngonda, published in 1958, is one of the first French-language texts to be published by an African woman.