According to some theorists, the roman d’apprentissage, a sub-genre of the novel that reached its height during the 19th century, was essentially a masculine genre in which the female characters invariably played an incidental role. Although some maintain that the sub-genre is now obsolete, many others insist that it continues to be adapted to explore themes relating to larger topics such feminism and postcolonialism. The current study examines how a female author of Cameroonian origin, Calixthe Beyala, appears to have adapted the traditional form of the roman d’apprentissage in her novel, Assèze l’Africaine, to reflect the perspective of a young black woman migrating from Cameroon to Paris, while simultaneously exploring theoretical concepts such as féminitude and hybridité. By comparing the essential characteristics of the novel to those advanced by Pierre Aurégan (1997) concerning the sub-genre as a whole, the study first attempts to determine whether the novel in question can reasonably be classified as a roman d’apprentissage. Subsequently, given that the protagonist is female, by exploring the literary function of several of the male characters in the novel, the study seeks to reveal whether the roles of the characters are simply reversed according to their gender, with the male characters merely playing an incidental role. The study reveals that although the author has clearly adapted the sub-genre to suit her own purposes, the novel still adheres to enough of the typical characteristics to be classified as a roman d’apprentissage. In addition, although the protagonist is female, the roles of the characters do not appear to be simply reversed, as several of the male characters are essential to the emotional development of the heroine, as well as to the perpetuation of the binary oppositions female/male and black/white, which, it has been suggested, the author seeks to maintain in her other works. It would seem that, in the novel under examination, the male characters largely function as an essential complement to the female ones. It remains to be seen, however, whether the same can be said about the characters in the author’s other works.

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