July - September Theme Read: Francophone Countries

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July - September Theme Read: Francophone Countries

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1banjo123
Editado: Jun 15, 2013, 6:25 pm

2banjo123
Jun 15, 2013, 6:27 pm

For this quarter, we are focusing on literature from non-European French-speaking countries. I have gathered some information (mostly from Wikipedia) and some recommendations. Hopefully readers will jump in with other ideas and recommendations.

3banjo123
Jun 15, 2013, 6:28 pm

The French colonial empire was the set of territories that were under French rule primarily from the 17th century to the late 1960s. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the colonial empire of France was the second-largest in the world behind the British Empire. The French colonial empire extended over 12,347,000 km² (4,767,000 sq. miles) of land at its height in the 1920s and 1930s. Including metropolitan France, the total amount of land under French sovereignty reached 13,018,575 km² (4,980,000 sq. miles) at the time, almost 1/10 of the Earth's total land area. Its influence made French a widely-spoken colonial European language, along with English, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch.
In rivalry with England, France began to establish colonies in North America, the Caribbean, and India, following the Spanish and Portuguese successes during the Age of Discovery. A series of wars with Great Britain during the 18th century and early 19th century, which France lost, ended its colonial ambitions in these areas, and with it what some historians term the "first" French colonial empire.
In the 19th century, France established a new empire in Africa and Southeast Asia. In this period France's conquest of an Empire in Africa was dressed up as a moral crusade. In 1884 Jules Ferry declared; "The higher races have a right over the lower races, they have a duty to civilize the inferior races." Full citizenship rights - assimilation - were offered, although in reality "assimilation was always receding and the colonial populations treated like subjects not citizens."
Following the First World War, and even more so after the Second World War, anti-colonial movements began to challenge European authority. France unsuccessfully fought bitter wars in Vietnam and Algeria to keep its empire intact, but by the end of the 1960s many of France's colonies had gained independence. However, some remaining territories – especially islands and archipelagos – were integrated into France as overseas departments and territories. These now total altogether 123,150 km² (47,548 sq. miles), which amounts to only 1% of the pre-1939 French colonial empire's area, with 2,685,705 people living in them in 2011.

4banjo123
Jun 15, 2013, 6:29 pm

I. French is the official language of France and its overseas territories* as well as 14 other countries:
1. Bénin
2. Burkina Faso
3. Central African Republic
4. Congo (Democratic Republic of)
5. Congo (Republic of)
6. Côte d'Ivoire
7. Gabon
8. Guinea
9. Luxembourg
10. Mali
11. Monaco
12. Niger
13. Sénégal
14. Togo
*French territories - DOM-TOM
Départements d'outre-mer (DOM), also called Régions d'outre-mer (ROM)
French Guyana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, La Réunion
Collectivités d'outre-mer (COM), formerly called Territoires d'outre mer (TOM)
French Polynesia, Mayotte,** New Caledonia, Saint Pierre and Miquelon,** Wallis and Futuna, French southern & Antarctic lands
**These two were formerly called Collectivités territoriales

II. French is one of the official languages in the following countries:
• Belgium
• Burundi
• Cameroon
• Canada
• Chad
• Channel Islands (Guernsey and Jersey)
• Comoros
• Djibouti
• Equatorial Guinea
• Haiti (the other official language is French Creole)
• Madagascar
• Rwanda
• Seychelles
• Switzerland
• Vanuatu

There are also a number of countries where French is commonly used but not official.

5banjo123
Jun 15, 2013, 6:31 pm

6banjo123
Jun 15, 2013, 6:32 pm

French in Cameroon is an example of the heterogeneous Francophone world. It is different from the French spoken in France, Canada, or Gabon. There are different varieties of Cameroon French. French of Cameroon’s North part is different from French of the country’s South part. This is due to the fact that the country is neither socially nor culturally uniform. As a consequence, French will be different from one province/department to another.
In Canada, French was introduced during the 17th century with the French explorer Jacques Cartier in 1554. Quebec was founded by the French Samuel de Champlain in 1608. There are high chances that French immigrants going to Nouvelle-France (New France) had to have good knowledge of regional French before their departure. Nowadays, the official languages in Canada are English and French; however, only the province of Quebec has a French-speaking majority. Sizable French-speaking minorities exist in the provinces of New Brunswick, Ontario, and Manitoba.
After gaining independence in the 1950s and 1960s, the Arabic-speaking countries of the Maghreb: Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria, strived to reduce the use of French by implementing different arabisation policies. However, the language switch was difficult because competence in Standard Arabic (which is different from the Maghrebi varieties) was far behind competence in French. French remains the language of the private sector and close contacts with France and other French-speaking countries ensures the language's survival. Mauritania, also an Arabic-speaking country, abolished French as a de jure official language in 1991, but has like its northern neighbours kept it as the de facto second language.
In Mauritius, English is considered the official language, however French is the dominant language of mass communications and business. Additionally, the French-based Mauritian Creole is the main native language and serves as the country's lingua franca.
French is spoken in small amounts mainly by the elderly and elite populations in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. This is due to the heavy French influence on the former territory known as French Indochina, which included these countries. However, since the early 1990s and 2000s, there has been a revival of the French language in these three countries and French is used for international relations and is at times used as an administrative language.
Lebanon is officially Arabic-speaking, but French is commonly spoken, especially by Christians, and the language receives some government recognition. Lebanon does not only count an important number of French speakers; it is also Francophile. The linguistic plurality of Lebanon is due to its important place in the business world. This explains why so many Lebanese speak fluent French and/or English. Until the civil war, some Christian communities refused to speak Arabic. Christians used to go to high schools where lessons were given in French. Thus theses communities became French speaking. French is generally more spoken by wealthy classes of the population. Although English developed these last years in the country, French stays the first foreign language in Lebanon. Indeed, 45% of the population is French speaking (against 30% of English speakers).

7banjo123
Editado: Jun 30, 2013, 10:38 pm

Reading Suggestions:

AFRICA and the MIDDLE EAST

Senegal:

Mariama Ba : So Long a Letter
Ousmane Sembene, God’s Bits of Wood; Xala
Marie NDiayee : Three Strong Women

Cameroon:
Ferdinand Oyono: The Old Man and the Medal; Houseboy
Werewere Liking : The Amputated Memory
Léonora Miano: Dark Heart of the Night

Guinea:
Camara Laye: The Dark Child

Tunisia
Albert Memmi: Pillar of Salt
Abdelwahab Meddeb: Talismano

Algeria:
Frantz Fanon: The Wretched of the Earth
Assia Djebar: Fantasia, an Algerian Prison; Algerian White; Children of the New World ; The Tongue's Blood Does Not Run Dry
Boualem Sansal: The German Mujahid
Albertine Sarrazin: Astragal
Of Dreams and Assassins by Malika Mokeddem
Morocco:
Tahar Ben Jellour: Leaving Tangiers
Mahi Binebine: Welcome to Paradise
Abdellatif Laâbi: The Bottom of the Jar

Lebanon:
Amin Maalouf: Samarkand

The Congo:
Alain Mabanckou: African Psycho; Blue, White, Red; Memoirs of a Porcupine
Sony Lab'ou Tansi: Life and a Half; The Seven Solitudes of Lorsa Lopez

Togo:
Tete-Michel Kpomassie: An African in Greenland

Djibouti:
Abdourahman A. Waberi: Transit; In the United States of Africa

Mauritis:
Nathacha Appanah: The Last Brother

Egypt:

Albert Cossery: Proud Beggars, The Colors of Infamy, and The Jokers.

The Ivory Coast:
the Wild Beasts to Vote by Ahmadou Kourouma

8banjo123
Editado: Jun 30, 2013, 10:41 pm

THE CARIBBEAN

Barbados
Maryse Conde: I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem

Martinique:
Patrice Chamoiseu ; Texaco; Solibo Magnificient

Aimé Césaire, A Season in the Congo
Eau de Cafe by Raphael Confiant

Haiti:

René Philoctète, Massacre River

9banjo123
Editado: Jun 30, 2013, 10:39 pm

SOUTHEAST ASIA
Vietnam:
Kim Thuy: Ru
The Three Fates by Linda Le.

10banjo123
Editado: Jun 30, 2013, 10:40 pm

CANADA

Dany Laferriere: How to Make Love to a Negro; I am a Japanese Writer; The return
Gaetan Soucy: The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches
Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner
A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali by Gil Courtemanche.
Anna's World by Marie-Claire Blais

11banjo123
Jun 15, 2013, 6:37 pm

I hope everyone is excited about reading Francophone literature! I am posting this early, as I will be off-line for a couple weeks. Hopefully people will jump in with other suggestions and ideas, and that will allow me to go in and plump up the suggested reading sections later.

12banjo123
Jun 15, 2013, 6:43 pm

And here is a picture to make French colonialism more appetizing:

13kidzdoc
Editado: Jun 15, 2013, 9:35 pm

I'm very eager to get started on this theme. Here are the books I'm thinking of reading this coming quarter (the starred books are the ones I'm most interested in):

Mahi Binebine, Welcome to Paradise (Morocco)
*Aimé Césaire, A Season in the Congo (Martinique)
Patrick Chamoiseau, Solibo Magnificent (Martinique)
*Patrick Chamoiseau, Texaco (Martinique)
Assia Djebar, Algerian White (Algeria)
*Assia Djebar, Children of the New World (Algeria)
Assia Djebar, The Tongue's Blood Does Not Run Dry (Algeria)
*Abdellatif Laâbi, The Bottom of the Jar (Morocco)
Dany Laferrière, I Am a Japanese Writer (Haiti/Canada)
*Dany Laferrière, The Return (Haiti/Canada)
*Alain Mabanckou, Blue White Red: A Novel (Republic of the Congo)
Abdelwahab Meddeb, Talismano (Tunisia)
Léonora Miano, Dark Heart of the Night (Cameroon)
*Sembène Ousmane, God's Bits of Wood (Senegal)
René Philoctète, Massacre River (Haiti)
*Boualem Sansal, The German Mujahid (Algeria)
Abdourahman A. Waberi, Transit (Djibouti)

14banjo123
Jun 15, 2013, 10:06 pm

That's a great list Darryl! Thanks so much.

15rebeccanyc
Jun 16, 2013, 7:46 am

This is great, Rhonda, and I'm excited about this theme read. I can definitely recommend God's Bits of Wood.

Other books I've read from Francophone Africa include Houseboy by Ferdinand Oyono (Cameroon, and better than The Old Man and the Medal), Life and a Half by Sony Lab'ou Tansi (Congo), The Last Brother by Nathacha Appanah (Mauritius), and In the United States of Africa by Abdourahman A. Waberi (Djibouti).

And from North Africa: Astragal by Albertine Sarrazin (Algeria and France), and Proud Beggars, The Colors of Infamy, and The Jokers by Albert Cossery (Egypt)

And from Asia, by a Vietnamese author living in Paris, The Three Fates by Linda Le.

Books I own and may read include The Seven Solitudes of Lorsa Lopez by Sony Lab'ou Tansi (Congo), Memoirs of a Porcupine by Alain Mabackou (Congo), The Bottom of the Jar by Abdellatif Laabi (Morocco), Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote by Ahmadou Kourouma (Ivory Coast), The German Mujahid by Boualem Sansal (Algeria), Xala by Sembene Ousmane (Senegal), and Of Dreams and Assassins by Malika Mokeddem (Algeria).

I also hope to branch out to Asia and the Caribbean with some of the suggestions here.

16Nickelini
Jun 21, 2013, 12:59 pm

I have some Quebecois literature in my TBR, so I'm sure I'll be able to participate. Perhaps Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner or more likely, A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali by Gil Courtemanche.

17SassyLassy
Jun 21, 2013, 3:00 pm

Going with Quebecois in the TBR too, I started Anna's World by Marie-Claire Blais. Not far how far I will go as it is full of rage and I'm feeling quite relaxed and would like to stay that way, at least for a while.

Great lists above.

18rebeccanyc
Jun 28, 2013, 5:48 pm

In addition to the books I mentioned in post 15, I've discovered some others in my library I might read: Leo Africanus by Amin Maalouf (Lebanon), The Amputated Memory by Werewere Liking (Cameroon), The Radiance of the King by Camara Laye (Guinea), An African in Greenland by Tete-Michel Kpomassie (Togo), and Return to My Native Land by Aime Cesaire (Martinique).

19GlebtheDancer
Editado: Jun 29, 2013, 2:56 pm

I'm hoping to contribute with Eau de Cafe by Raphael Confiant (Martinique), and perhaps an Algerian book I have somewhere.

20Trifolia
Jun 29, 2013, 3:49 pm

I'll try to participate with:
- Une année chez les Français by Fouad Laroui (Morocco)
- Les honneurs perdus by Calixthe Beyala (Cameroon)
- Leon l'Africain by Amin Maalouf

21lriley
Jun 29, 2013, 5:38 pm

I really loved Ahmadou Kourouma's Allah is not obliged--it is IMO a great book. OTOH his Monnew I struggled through mightily. Two French Canadian women worth checking out--Marie Claire Blais and Anne Hebert.

22banjo123
Jun 30, 2013, 3:06 pm

I am excited about all the recommendations above! Also excited to read about everyone's reading.

I am planning to focus mostly on Africa for my reading. I will start with Three Strong Women by Marie N'Diaye, I am planning to read Liking's The Amputated Memory this month.

23rainpebble
Jul 1, 2013, 2:04 pm

As of now I am planning to read a book that most everyone but me has already read: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. I have been meaning to get to this for decades and it has been on my shelves that long so a good opportunity here to finally read it.
So many interesting titles listed above. I will be looking forward to reading what all of you think of the Francophone literature you choose to read in this quarter.

24PaperbackPirate
Jul 1, 2013, 3:28 pm

Thank you banjo123 for putting all the information together for this theme!

25rebeccanyc
Jul 1, 2013, 4:39 pm

I've started off the month with The Seven Solitudes of Lorsa Lopez by Sony Labou Tansi; it seems to be almost as strange as his Life and a Half, which I read a few years ago.

26banjo123
Jul 2, 2013, 8:21 pm

Hooray! I am excited that we have so many people reading Franco-Lit. I can't wait to see the reviews.
Is anyone able to actually read in French? I have just started Three Strong Women and love her writing. I wish that I could read it in the original.

27GlebtheDancer
Jul 3, 2013, 4:28 pm

-->25 rebeccanyc:
I read The Seven Solitudes of Lorsa Lopez a couple of years ago. It is the kind of heavy handed magical realism that I just can't handle. I can't find a review of it of mine, but it would go something like... 'lots of weird stuff happened, tried to cling to any vestige of plot or point, failed, more weird stuff happened'. This isn't, strangely enough, a criticism of the book for me. but an acknowledgement of my limits as a reader of magical realism. It made me wonder if there was an allegorical significance to it all the went way over my head.

28rebeccanyc
Jul 4, 2013, 7:24 am

Andy, your review is on the book page. It kind of went over my head too! Here's my review of The Seven Solitudes of Lorsa Lopez.



As in the other book I've read by this Congolese author, Life and a Half, time shifts, impossible things happen, and people are pulled by the needs of their bodies. I found this one almost as confusing, just as satiric, and not quite as powerful.

The story begins in Valancia, the former capital (of the country, region?) when the murder of a woman is predicted and then happens. The police, who have to come from the inland capital town, Nsanga-Norda, never arrive -- for 47 years. After the woman, Estina Benta, is killed by her husband, the Lorsa Lopez of the title, lots of other bizarre things happen, including other murders and deaths, but the reader also sees the life of the community and how it struggles for its identity and power. There is a hint of global politics, because the economic life of the nation has been affected by an affront to the US, which has resulted in there being no market for its pineapple crop, and because various European scientists are examining fossils (?) in various rocks and cliffs to try to identify the ancestors of humans. To complicate matters Sony Lab'ou Tansi (a pen name) writes in a dense allusive prose, although he can often be funny.

If I step back and try to look at the themes the author is exploring, I would have to say the big ones are identity, pride, and power, or the lack of it (the coast versus inland, Valencia versus Nsanga-Norda, "Christians" versus Muslims, the responsibilities of members the Founding Line), women versus men (very strong female characters for a male writer -- the women are the heart of the book), and, love, humanity, and respect for our fellow humans. Nonetheless, I was mystified for most of the book.

29banjo123
Jul 6, 2013, 3:49 pm

Thanks for the review, Rebecca. I think I will skip that one.

30banjo123
Editado: Jul 6, 2013, 3:52 pm

Three Strong Women by Marie NDiaye
I discovered after starting this book that I should not have included it under Senegalese literature. NDiaye’s father was from Senegal, but she was raised in France by a French mother. I found and interesting review by Fernanca Eberstadt from the New York times which addresses this.
“….NDiaye was the inadvertent cause of a national furor when a member of the French Parliament, responding to an interview in which she’d called the Sarkozy government “monstrous,” suggested in an open letter to the culture minister that Goncourt laureates should be required to “respect national cohesion and the image of our country” or else remain silent. What most disturbed people about this outburst — coupled as it was with the Sarkozy government’s increasingly ham-­fisted policies on inner-city policing and the expulsion of immigrants — was what they saw as its unspoken assumption that as a black woman of African parentage, NDiaye should have to prove herself deserving in a way that would never be demanded of white male laureates.
The expectation — whether menacing or well meaning — that NDiaye should “represent” multiracial France, or be considered a voice of the French African diaspora, has often dogged her. In fact, as NDiaye is at pains to make clear, she scarcely knew her Senegalese father, who came to France as a student in the 1960s and returned to Africa when she was a baby. Raised by her French mother — a secondary school science teacher — in a housing project in suburban Paris, with vacations in the countryside where her maternal grandparents were farmers, NDiaye describes herself as a purely French product, with no claim to biculturalism but her surname and the color of her skin. Nonetheless, the absent father — charismatic, casually cruel, voraciously selfish — haunts NDiaye’s fiction and drama, as does the shadow of a dreamlike Africa in which demons and evil portents abound, where the unscrupulous can make overnight fortunes and, with another turn of the wheel, find themselves rotting in a jail cell.”

So I am not completely clear that this book belongs in this reading topic. But it does take place, in part, in Africa, and deals with issues of identity and belonging for people whose background straddles two cultures.

As for the book; I started out loving the writing. The first narrator, Norah, discusses seeing her father after a number of years and being struck by changes in his dress and odor. NDiaye’s prose is beautiful—one can see why she won the Prix Goncourt for this novel. However, as I continued the book, I became more ambivalent.

All of the narrators seem to be suffering from major mental illness, or existential angst, or maybe a combination of the two. It’s impossible to know what’s “true” and “false” in these narratives by individuals who seem to be unraveling before our eyes. They commit crimes, alienate friends and family, and lose the ability to be socially appropriate. Somehow it bothered me that Norah kept losing control of her bladder. I couldn’t understand this in an educated, grown woman. Perhaps it’s a French thing. Or maybe it’s supposed to indicate that she turns back to childhood in the presence of her father.

Unreliable narrators can work for me, and they almost did here, but I ended the book not sure what happened or why. I think maybe it is a French thing, as the same thing happened to be earlier this year when I read Camus’ The Stranger.



31banjo123
Jul 17, 2013, 10:55 pm

The Amputated Memory by Werewere Liking

Liking has had a very interesting life, as I learned from the book’s afterward. She was born in South Central Cameroon in 1950 and initiated into the ancestral traditions of the Bassa by her paternal grandparents Her grandparents, apparently recognizing her extraordinary spirit brought her into secret societies normally reserved for males.
Her birth year was also a beginning for the Nationalist movements in the Cameroon and these movements shaped her life and work. Apparently, her father sided with the French during this period, which caused a lot of conflict in the community.
Liking has not been completely forthcoming on biographical details, but she had about three years of elementary education, was removed from school by her father, married at 12 and had given birth to a daughter before her 13th birthday. She became a singer in Doula nightclubs at 16, remarried, had a son, a successful music career, began to pain, worked as a journalist and researched oral traditions and traditional theater techniques. Her first book of poetry was published in Paris in 1977.
Liking’s career is unique. Most published African writers have had the advantages and disadvantages of European higher education. Liking had no formal higher education and did not even set foot in Europe until she was well into her 20s.
Liking left the Cameroon for the Ivory Coast in 1978 for political reasons and began to teach and train at the University level in traditional African theater. In 1985 she left the university setting to focus on the Village of Ki-Yi – a pan-African arts collective.
This novel is mostly autobiographical and focuses on the author’s early years. As one can tell from the title, memory, whether reliable or unreliable, is a major focus of the book. The afterword quotes Liking as saying:

“A memory marks us more than the act itself. The act is not what’s important, it’s the remaining trace of the event that is…As for me to write this novel I went about digging deep into my memory. And what I found in my head was very, very violent. But as I say, no one lives the same thing in the same way. Other family members do not have the same recollections that I do, although we experienced a certain number of these events together. What becomes obvious to me is that Africa has a suppressed memory. Why is there so much silence in Africa? If African women started remembering all of the violence they’ve experienced, well, it would set of an explosion. Is this really a good thing? I’m not so sure. I believe that one succeeds in killing the even through silence, and perhaps in our case it’s for the better.”

Liking is obviously a superbly intelligent, creative and original individual. I felt lucky to be able to read this book, and to experience the world from the viewpoint of someone who was raised with a world view so different than my own.

As for the book itself, it’s difficult for me to know how to criticize it. Overall, I liked the book and found it uplifting and readable. Although full of difficult events, our heroine always remains active and positive, committed to creativity and art; and to bringing these values to children.

There were some aspects of the novel that I did not like, and I wonder if perhaps those were indicative of a more African viewpoint and style.

The book is told in a combination of poetry and prose. I think that this is an attempt to combine traditional African poetry into a novel framework. For me, I usually skip the poetry in novels (that’s what got me through Lord of the Rings. Here, I did try to read the poetry, and found it mostly kind of didactic and uninspiring. Here is an example:

“Naja, my mother, thank you for my life;
And Grandmother, thank you for my education above all,
For without education a person is nothing, a void.
Humans are not born divine or even human;
They grow into it, achieving it by choosing to transform.
Achieving it primarily because of education.
What is the mystery, then? Enormous work;
The very mystery of the divine is work”

I also had a problem with Liking’s writing becoming digressive and preachy. Here is an example:

“Unfortunately, for most of us work is contradictory to pleasure. I thank God that he granted me the good fortune to weave the two together. A slave cannot make that connection. My namesake, Grand Madja Halla, always told me, “You, you’ll always know whether you are free or not as long as you’re able to link work and pleasure.”

The didactic bits do raise some interesting thoughts, but for me, I would rather have the story itself point to the moral.

Another critique I have, is how often the book seemed to be self-inflating. The narrator, our author, is presented as amazing, kind, giving, creative, etc. I felt like a little humility wouldn’t have hurt. On the other hand, the author does frequently give props to the people who helped her along the way. There are many throughout the book, the chief among them Auntie Roz. In the beginning of the book she describes Auntie Roz:

“Every day she rises between four and five in the morning to visit the inmates in Laguna’s large jail, as big as a whole city neighborhood. Working as a volunteer, she prays for and with them, runs errands for the imprisoned pregnant mothers, and helps their children. She walks miles and miles just to go back and forth. In the afternoon she visits those who are confined to hospitals. And still she finds time to remember birthdays, prepare cookies made with peanuts or cucumber seeds, and bring us her good wishes, as old as we are! All of it in complete serenity. I wanted to pay tribute to her.”

In the end, this is a very worthwhile book. It brings to life Liking’s African childhood, the relatives and friends who supported her throughout many difficult times, and pays tribute, especially, to African women.

32rebeccanyc
Jul 18, 2013, 6:47 pm

A thought-provoking review that gives me a little pause about reading this book, which I've had on the TBR for several years and thought I would read for this challenge. Maybe still will.

33banjo123
Jul 18, 2013, 10:26 pm

Rebecca, you totally should read The Amputated Memory. I ended up liking the book, and it certainly gave me a lot to think about. Plus, I would be curious to hear your thoughts.

I think that I am reading something by Assia Djebar next. Two of her books are waiting for me at the library.

34lilisin
Jul 19, 2013, 4:41 am

26, banjo -

I can read in French as I am a native speaker but I don't think I'll be able to participate in this challenge although it looks very interesting and I will be bookmarking it for future reference.

35kidzdoc
Editado: Jul 28, 2013, 6:21 pm

A Season in the Congo by Aimé Césaire

   

Aimé Césaire (1913-2008) was a legendary and influential Caribbean poet, playwright and public intellectual, who was also one of the creators of the Négritude movement in Francophone literature, whose aim was to unite the peoples of the Caribbean and African French colonies in opposition to the "mother country".

Une saison au congo is the third of four plays that Césaire wrote in his lifetime, which is about the brief and tumultuous career of Patrice Lumumba, the first Prime Minister of the Republic of Congo. Lumumba, a former beer salesman and political activist, was elected to office in July 1960 after the country gained its independence from Belgium, but he soon ran afoul of Belgium, the US and other western European nations and the United Nations, which resulted in his arrest by his top general Joseph Mobutu and his subsequent torture and assassination in January 1961 by Belgian and Congolese soldiers.

This play was written in 1966, and was first performed at the Théâtre de l'Est Parisien the following year. The central question of Une saison au congo is the choice that newly liberated African countries must answer: whether to choose dipenda, an state of quasi-independence in which foreign governments, former colonizers or appointed dictators and their cronies choose the country's path and steal the majority of its wealth while the majority are condemned to poverty and premature death, or uhuru, the Swahili word for freedom, in which all citizens can participate in the country's destiny, free from external or internal domination or intimidation, and have the opportunity to succeed and thrive alongside their neighbors. The second path is the more difficult one to take, but it is the one that will more likely result in an improved standard of living for its citizens, and long term stability for the country.

Lumumba was targeted and imprisoned by the colonial police force in 1959 for his political activity as the leader of the Congolese national movement (MNC), after a demonstration in Stanleyville led to the deaths of 30 protestors. Due to political pressure from his MNC colleagues he was freed and allowed to travel to Brussels early the following year, where he participated in the conference that led to the declaration that the Republic of Congo would be granted its independence. He was hailed as a hero by the Congolese people, but he first invoked the ire of the Belgian government on Independence Day, when he gave a spontaneous speech that was sharply critical of Belgium and its colonial rule, in the presence of the Belgian king.

Lumumba was faced with crises through his seven month term in office. The Belgian government, concerned that losing the wealth contained in the Congolese mining industry would cause it to become the "Liechtenstein of Europe", secretly collaborated with the leader of Katanga, the richest province, and supported a separatist movement whose aim was to keep profits flowing from the Congo to Belgium in exchange for enriching the Katangan leader and his cronies. Lumumba, with the support of President Kasa-Vubu and the chief of the military, Joseph Mobutu, engaged in a military strike against the separatist movement. Lumumba sought support from the United States, which turned him down, and the United Nations, which took a passive and indifferent stance toward the Congolese government. He then turned to the USSR for support, which led Belgium, the US and possibly the UK to secretly plot his removal and assassination. Mobutu removed both Lumumba and Kasa-Vubu from power, and ultimately Lumumba was captured, brutally tortured and executed by Congolese and Belgian troops loyal to Mobutu on 17 January 1961.

Césaire portrays Lumumba as an idealistic, fiery and uncompromising leader, whose political naïveté and inability to see the dangers posed by his former close friend Joseph Mobutu led to his downfall. He was passionately committed to a democratic Congo and a united African continent that was free of foreign domination, national corruption and regional differences, but he was also self-righteous in his beliefs and refused to accept counsel from others who urged him to proceed slowly and with great caution, given the political landmines that surrounded him.





I saw the interpretation of A Season in the Congo at the Young Vic Theatre in London earlier this month, and I read the script earlier today. It was a brilliant, powerful and innovative interpretation of Césaire's play, which starred Olivier Award winning actor Chiwetel Ejiofor as Patrice Lumumba. His physical resemblance to the Congolese leader was striking, but was exceeded by the strength and conviction of his outstanding performance. The supporting cast was solid, and the play was enhanced by the use of puppetry to represent the colonial powers and the UN (such as the Belgian government in the second photo above), a wise old man who spoke in Swahili throughout the performance, soothing African music, and especially the very athletic and stirring dance routines that were mesmerizing. The performance was true to the spirit of the play, although it didn't follow the script line for line; in my opinion this provided more freedom to the performance, as it removed some of the rough language and mundane dialogue contained within it, and allowed the spirit of Patrice Lumumba and the Congolese people to be portrayed in greater color and brilliance.

I couldn't have been any closer to the stage of the Young Vic Theatre, located on The Cut a block or two away from the famed Old Vic Theatre. The audience on the floor sat in chairs around small patio tables, and my chair abutted the front of the stage, as several of the actors including Ejiofor were within easy reach on numerous occasions, which made the performance that much more powerful for me. It lasted over 2-1/2 hours with a 15 minute intermission, making it one of the longest plays I've seen recently, but I was engrossed from the first scene to the shocking one at the end of the play, which caused an audience member to shriek in horror. The cast was given a solid 4-5 minute standing ovation at the play's conclusion, which was well deserved. I give four stars to the script of A Season in the Congo, and 4½ stars to the superb interpretation of it by the director and cast of this month's production at the Young Vic.

36GerrysBookshelf
Jul 20, 2013, 11:00 am

Crossing the Mangrove by Maryse Conde
A stranger, Francis Sancher, comes to a small community in Guadeloupe. After his death, we learn more about Sancher from the recollections and musings of various villagers, some who loved him but more who hated or were suspicious of him. At first I wasn't sure I was going to like this book, but as the stories unfolded, all the threads started coming together and I found it enjoyable and interesting.
The Bottom of the Jar
I'm about 3/4 of the way through this book and thoroughly enjoying it. This autobiographical novel by Abdellatif Laabi vividly describes the culture and setting of Fez, Morocco. Highly recommended.

37banjo123
Jul 20, 2013, 1:58 pm

Hi Lilisin -- sorry that you won't be able to participate. Please feel free to comment if you have any insights that you think could help us non-French speakers.

Thanks for posting the theater review and pictures, Darryl! It looks like so much fun. I think that I will try to read the play later, since I can't fly out to London to see it. :(

Gerry, thanks for the review.s. I have another book by Conde on my wishlist and now you have me intrigued to try The Bottom of the Jar

38Essa
Jul 21, 2013, 7:21 pm

I have been reading a couple of Francophone works without realizing this thread was going on. Thanks to banjo123 for setting it up, and to all for the input and reviews. :)

I am currently reading Moroccan writer Mohamed Choukri's autobiographical work, For Bread Alone. It was mentioned in a round-up/recommendation list on the Arab Literature in English blog, and was one on the "top 5 must-read" lists from both Laila Lalami and Nouri Gana. It's hard to say I'm "enjoying" it, exactly, because his life story is, at least so far, extremely grim. But it is very interesting.

I recently finished Moroccan scholar Fatima Mernissi's semi-fictionalized autobiography, Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood. I first learned of it years ago on YouTube, of all places; there is an interview with her on an old Charlie Rose program. I grew to like the characters of Habiba and Chama, especially; although Mernissi said in the interview that they are fictional. The book is pleasant to read, though -- the writing is compelling and descriptive, and I felt drawn into the author's world.

As it happens, the two are (or were, in the case of the late Choukri), contemporary, with Choukri having been born in 1935, and Mernissi born in 1940. Each of them thus lived through a period of great changes in Moroccan society, including its independence from France in 1956, and their autobiographies are reflective of that.

39rebeccanyc
Jul 23, 2013, 12:40 pm

I've just read Ambiguous Adventure by Cheikh Hamidou Kane, a Senegalese writer. Here's my review.



In this brief but powerful book, Samba Diallo, the son of an important leader of the Diallobé in Senegal, goes first to a local Islamic school, where he studies with a man known as the Teacher of the Diallobé, then to the school set up by the French colonial administration, and finally on to college in Paris. While the novella focuses on Samba (whose schooling, apparently, was a lot like that of the author), it is really a philosophical novel, consisting of multiple conversations about Islamic beliefs versus those of the west. Through these conversations, the Islamic beliefs are presented as a beautiful way of living in the world, of interacting with other people, and of approaching death, while western philosophies and actions are divorced from meaning and from faith, materialistic, and atheistic. Although this could appear didactic or oversimplified, in the context of the novel the conversations appear completely realistic and thoughtful. In essence, the novella confronts the European conquest of Africa with ideas as well as bullets, leading Africans to become estranged from their own history and cultures.

Although this is fundamentally a philosophical novel (how French, one might say), the author has created memorable characters and situations, both in Africa and in France, and a portrait of a time when African leaders had a real choice to make about how to deal with the west. Of course, that choice still continues, and not only in Africa.

40banjo123
Jul 25, 2013, 12:21 am

I am excited about all the Franco-Reading going on. Thanks for the reviews, Essa and Rebecca.

I am interested in Dreams of Trespass--I hope I can find at at the library. The last 4 books that I wanted for this challenge were not available at the Multnomah County Library. Luckily, my partner works for a community college, so I am going to see if she can find them there.

41kidzdoc
Jul 28, 2013, 1:05 pm

I have amended my review of A Season in the Congo by Aimé Césaire in message #35 to include comments the script of the play, which I finished this morning, and how the performance differed from the text but was enhanced by a less strict adherence toit.

42GlebtheDancer
Jul 28, 2013, 5:44 pm

Eau de Cafe by Raphael Confiant

Confiant is one of the proponents of what he calls 'creolitude', along with Patrick Chamoiseau and Aime Cesaire (see Kidzdoc's post in 35). Creolitude is a sort of reaction to the negritude movement. Whereas negritude emphasises the African origins of Afro-Caribbean and African-Americans, Creolitude is more interested in the often bewildering racial, social and sexual politics of the Caribbean, and how that milieu gave rise to modern Caribbean identity.

'Eau de Cafe' is a woman, so-called because her skin is the colour of weak coffee. She lives in a village that is on the coast, but has turned its back on the sea, seeing it as dangerous and malevolent. The village is populated by people of a variety of races; white, black, mulatto, middle-eastern. The book examines the lives of some of the main characters, principally through their loves, their conflicts and their sexual interactions. The subtle politics of the region inveigles every relationship, and Confiant uses his often slightly aimless narrative to examine Martinican identity. At the heart of the story is Eau de Cafe herself, and her adoptive children, one of whom, Atilia, was drowned, the other of whom has returned from exile to discover the truth behind Atilia's death, and uncover the village's secret history.

Confiant's style was very reminiscent of Chamoiseau's, with a jaunty, avuncular tone and a light touch of magical realism. The lives of the characters are blighted by poverty, sexual violence and heartache, so this is no light read, but the generally positive tone was engaging and allowed Confiant to play with some very dark issues. This was a very enjoyable book, but one that packed a punch.

43StevenTX
Jul 31, 2013, 9:58 pm

Senegal: So Long a Letter by Mariama Bâ

 

"Fate grasps whom it wants, when it wants. When it moves in the direction of your desires, it brings you plenitude. But more often it unsettles, crosses you. Then one has to endure." A woman's struggle and endurance against fate and unfairness is the theme of this short novel in the form of a single, long letter. The writer of the letter is a Senegalese woman of fifty named Ramatoulaye. She is writing to her former classmate and lifelong best friend Aissatou. The occasion is the recent death of Ramatoulaye's husband, Modou.

Ramatoulaye describes briefly the funeral rites, but when she addresses her own feelings she is led immediately to the great resentment in her life: that Modou had recently taken a second wife. She recaps how this came about, and weaves into the story Aissatou's own personal history. Aissatou's husband, Mawdo, has also taken a second and younger wife. But Ramatoulaye is quick to point out that Mawdo did this only under pressure from his own family, whereas Modou's second marriage was a personal caprice. Modou fell in love with his own teenage daughter's best friend, and showered gifts upon the girl's mother so that she would be forced against her will to marry a man at least thirty years her senior. After thirty years of marriage to Modou, and having borne him twelve children, Ramatoulaye feels betrayed, not just by her husband, but by the male sex in general and the society it has built.

Mariama Bâ's novel is a statement of personal loss, grief, and perseverance, but it is also a manifesto for the cause of women's rights in Africa and elsewhere. She takes on the issues directly, saying "Nearly twenty years of independence! When will we have the first female minister involved in the decisions concerning the development of our country?" And later: "Instruments for some, baits for others, respected or despised, often muzzled, all women have almost the same fate, which religions or unjust legislation have sealed." The key issue is polygamy in Islamic states, but she also addresses arranged marriages, equality of education, political freedoms, inheritance laws and customs, and recognition for the economic value of homemaking services.

Aside from its feminist message, So Long a Letter offers an interesting look at how ancient traditions and modern values clash in today's Africa, even among the most highly educated and empowered classes. The characters in the novel are all university-educated professionals living in relative comfort, so the injustices of which Bâ writes are not to be overcome by money or education. I can't help but wonder, though, what Modou's side of the story would have been had the author allowed him to tell it.



Now on to Quebec: The First Garden by Anne Hébert

44banjo123
Jul 31, 2013, 10:41 pm

Nice review, Steven! I also just finished So Long a Letter, but haven't gotten to my review yet.

45banjo123
Ago 1, 2013, 3:39 pm

Here's my take:

So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba is a short epistalory novel written in French by a Sengalese author. It is written from a recent widow to a dear friend and gives a review of their lives. Both women are struggling with the issues of polygamy in this Muslim country, as both husbands had taken a younger wife.
This was very hard on the narrator and her friend, and also on the younger women, who are then stuck with older husbands. In both cases, the younger women’s families pushed the marriages for economic reasons.
The book is well written and interesting, though didactic at times. The women in the novel are educated, and economically independent, and so pretty easy to identify with.
In thinking about the book, I wondered whether it’s worse for a wife to be usurped by a younger woman in a polygamous society, versus what frequently happens in our own culture where men may take a younger wife or mistress. I am not sure.

46kidzdoc
Ago 12, 2013, 9:47 am

The German Mujahid by Boualem Sansal, translated from the French by Frank Wynne
     Original title: Le village de l'Allemand ou le journal des frères Schiller
     UK title: An Unfinished Business



Here I am, faced with a question as old as time: are we answerable for the crimes of our fathers, of our brothers, of our children? Our tragedy is that we form a direct line, there is no way out without breaking the chain and vanishing completely.

This powerful, thought provoking and unsettling novel is narrated by Malrich Schiller, a young man born to a German father and an Algerian mother. He was sent from his home village of Aïn Deb in Algeria to a Parisian banlieue by his parents, in order to seek a better life there. Malrich, an abbreviation of his real name, Malek Ulrich, has dropped out of school and has frequently run afoul of the local police in his neighborhood, which is populated by Arab and African emigrants who are largely unemployed, bored and trapped in a meaningless existence, while being cowed by local Islamic fundamentalists. His much older brother Rachel, short for Rachid Helmut, also lives nearby; he has a college degree, a successful career in a multinational corporation, and an enviable but troubled marriage. Despite this, he is viewed as an outsider and a sell out by many residents of the banlieue.

Rachel committed suicide in April 1996, after he became increasingly erratic and unreliable, which caused him to lose his job and his wife, Ophélie. After his death she gave Malrich the keys to their house to live in after she moved to Canada, and he soon discovered his brother's diary.

Their parents and dozens of other residents of Aïn Deb were murdered by Islamic fundamentalists two years earlier, in a senseless response to the Algerian military crackdown that followed the election of an Islamist government earlier in the decade. Rachel traveled to his home village soon afterward, and while retrieving his parents' belongings he makes a shocking discovery. His father Hans emigrated from Germany to Egypt and eventually Algeria at the end of World War II, earned the title Mujahid, or Islamic freedom fighter, after he converted from Christianity to Islam and fought bravely in the resistance during the Algerian War for Independence, and was given the honorary title Cheïkh Hassan by his fellow villagers, who often consulted him and respected him for his wisdom and fairness. However, in his personal effects are honorary medals and papers that indicate that he willingly served in the SS during World War II, and was stationed in several of the most notorious concentration camps.

Rachel is profoundly disturbed by this discovery, and feels a suffocating sense of guilt that haunts him over the remainder of his life. He ignores his responsibilities to his job and his wife, and spends his days retracing his father's path from Germany to Egypt to Algeria, in an effort to learn what role his father played in the Holocaust, and how a man who was dearly loved and respected by his family and neighbors could have participated in such monstrous acts. He is likewise troubled by the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Algeria and the banlieue where he resides, and he sees an uncanny parallel between the two.

When my parents and everyone else in Aïn Deb were murdered by the Islamists, Rachel got to thinking. He figured that fundamentalist Islam and Nazism were kif-kif—same old same old. He wanted to find out what would happen if people did nothing, the way people did nothing in Germany back in the day, what would happen if nobody did anything in Kabul and Algeria where they've got I don't know how many mass graves, or here in France where we've got all these Islamist Gestapo. In the end, the whole idea scared him so much he killed himself.

Malrich is also deeply affected after reading his brother's diary, as his brother hid this knowledge in an effort to protect him, and he is faced with a dilemma: can he stand by and passively accept the atrocities and restrictions that are being inflicted by the Islamic fundamentalists in the banlieue, or even join them in their cause, or should he stand up to them and openly reject their efforts to impose sharia on the community, knowing that he will could potentially pay for his indiscretions with his life?

The German Mujahid is a valuable and necessary book, which explores the history of former Nazis who escaped to Arabic countries toward the end of the Second World War, and compares their crimes to those being committed by Islamic and other religious fundamentalists and dictators throughout the world. It also questions the roles of citizens in these communities, who frequently passively accept or actively participate in crimes against their neighbors. This novel, and much of Sansal's work, was banned in Algeria after it was released. Sansal was recently vilified after his decision to attend the 2012 Jerusalem Writers Festival, which led to the revocation of the €15,000 prize he was slated to receive after he was awarded the Prix du Roman Arabe last year for his novel Rue Darwin. Sansal is a unique and courageous writer, whose voice must not be allowed to fall silent, and this reader eagerly looks forward to the translation of his past and upcoming works into English and the distribution of his books throughout the Arabic world.

47cushlareads
Ago 17, 2013, 3:45 am

Wonderful review of The German Mujahid, Darryl. You summed it up so well. I'm looking forward to more of his work being translated, too (I could kid myself and buy something of his in French but it will sit unread on the shelves if I do.)

48rebeccanyc
Ago 18, 2013, 12:49 pm

I just finished Xala by Sembène Ousmane. Here is my review.



In this bleak satire of post-colonial Senegal, the protagonist, El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye, a leading "businessman" (the quotes are Ousmane's) discovers that he is impotent, or xala, on the night of his wedding to his third wife, the beautiful and young N'Gone. Earlier that day, the local Chamber of Commerce and Industry had installed its very first African president, of which all its members, including El Hadji (a title which signifies he has made a pilgrimage to Mecca), are very proud. El Hadji is a sort of middleman, who buys goods in bulk and then resells them to other businesses, and he has become very rich over the years; he also spends liberally, on cars, chauffeurs, villas for each of his wives, and money for their children.

Needless to say, wives number one and two are not very happy about wife number three (although for different reasons), and so of course they are initially suspected putting on curse on El Hadji to cause his xala. He is distraught about it, naturally, and runs around to various Muslim and African wise men and healers, to no avail. In the meantime, his wives are unhappy, the whole town knows about his problem, and his business, through lack of attention and extravagant spending, is being run into the ground. Eventually a special healer resolves his problem but warns El Hadji that what he has taken away he can give back. The ending seems a little tacked on, but makes the political point of the novel.

I have previously read God's Bits of Wood by Ousmane, which depicted a railway strike in colonial Senegal and the way it empowered the women of the community. In this book, he illustrates the world of post-colonial Senegal, the way some people tried to emulate the French colonists, the corruption, the difficulties of polygamy, the way Islam and traditional religions interact, the interest of some in the younger generation of speaking in Wolof and not in French, and more, while using El Hadji's impotence to stand for the impotence of the Africans in the colonial and post-colonial world and, perhaps, the impotence of men confronted by stronger women. As in the earlier book, Ousmane creates interesting characters.

I was not as impressed by this novella as I was by God's Bits of Wood, but it is a dark take on post-colonial Africa.

49kidzdoc
Ago 19, 2013, 9:45 am

The Last Brother by Nathacha Appanah, translated from the French by Geoffrey Strachan

  

We very rarely notice changes within ourselves at the time, we perceive them later, in the light of events and our reactions to them, but, sitting there as I did, motionless in the dark, I sensed it, a change in myself, I felt as if I were getting bigger, growing, like the trees around me, and it seemed to me that the exhalation of the green, dark forest had something to do with it.

This gorgeous and deeply touching novel is set on the island nation of Mauritius off the coast of east Africa, which is isolated from the horrors of World War II but not from the harshness of life under British colonial rule. It is narrated by Raj, a nine year old boy whose family was among the thousands of Indians that were brought to the island decades before to work in its sugar cane fields for subsistence wages. After a tragic accident he and his parents have moved to a safer town, where his father finds work in a prison that supposedly houses hardened convicts. Raj is a sickly and stick thin boy, who is loved dearly by his mother but is not immune from his father's frequent wrathful and violent outbursts after he returns from his demeaning job. He is bored and lonely in his new home, with no close friends and little to occupy his fertile mind.

One day Raj watches the prison from nearby woods out of curiosity of the men who are housed there, and he is surprised to see a boy who is similar to him in age and size, although his blond hair and blue eyes set him apart. The two make eye contact, and later meet in a local hospital, where they quickly become friends despite their language differences. Raj learns that David is part of a group of approximately 1500 Jewish émigrés who attempted to travel from Eastern Europe to Palestine to escape the Nazis in 1940, but were refused admission because they did not have proper immigration documents. The British government determined that they were illegal immigrants, and condemned them to internment in the prison.

David is returned to the prison after his hospitalization, and Raj continues to observe his new friend from the woods. He escapes after a skirmish within the compound, and Raj helps him to flee from his pursuers. Unfortunately David is not well, and the two boys struggle to find food and shelter, as David's health rapidly declines.

The Last Brother is a wonderful coming of age novel, narrated by Raj as he nears the end of his life, which also highlights a little known chapter of Jewish history. The love and friendship that the two boys share rivals that of the most intimate couples, and these two characters will stay close to my heart for a long time to come.

50kidzdoc
Editado: Ago 20, 2013, 11:08 am

Dark Heart of the Night by Léonora Miano, translated from the French by Tamsin Black



From her point of view, the Africans' whole life was spent escaping death. They did not even seem aware that it surrounded them. It ran in rivers seething with worms that covered the children's skin in ulcers. It was in the water they drank, in the pools stagnating outside their huts, sending clouds of mosquitoes to cover the world at nightfall. Death was everywhere in the filthy poverty of Africa. Death was everywhere in the ignorance of peoples, and death was in the traditions; it was in these necrophiliac customs that often involved keeping dead people's skulls; in the witchcraft they practiced when potions would be concocted from crushed human bones or innards; in certain rituals that were liable to end in bloodbaths, and no one was unduly bothered when a woman died because she was not tough enough to restrain the flow of blood she lost at her excision. Death had made Africa its dominion.

This harrowing novel is set in an isolated Central African village, whose people have steadfastly maintained traditional roles and values that are not shared by the residents of neighboring towns and cities. Although Ayané was born there, after her father married a woman from another town and brought her to live with him there, she and her mother are viewed as troublesome outsiders, particularly after her father's death. Instead of staying in the village, Ayané left as a young girl to attend university, then moved to France to pursue a career and a better life. After several years abroad she has returned to the village, as her mother is in poor health, but she immediately antagonizes and angers the village elders due to her thoughtlessness and refusal to accept their mores.

The unnamed country is in a state of crisis, as militants roam the countryside and terrorize soldiers, government officials and ordinary citizens. While Ayané cares for her dying mother the villagers sense a malignant presence in the surrounding jungle, just out of eyesight. Within days they are set upon by a small band of armed men, who are fueled by drugs and their leaders' desire to unite their countrymen in their nationalist fervor. The militants propose a horrific ritual to ensure their solidarity, and after several villagers are openly murdered the remaining villagers, including the elders, passively accept and actively participate in the ceremony, in order to save their own lives. Ayané observes these events hidden from everyone, and after the militants take their leave she openly challenges the village elders for allowing such a thing to happen without protesting or fighting back, and she questions her own responsibility in silently accepting these monstrous acts without trying to save any of its victims.

Dark Heart of the Night, whose English title is a grievous translation of the book's original title L'intérieur de la nuit, is a disturbing look into the roles and responsibilities Africans have and must face when evil befalls them, their towns and their countries. She powerfully demonstrates the tragic effects that result when individuals act on their instinct to survive, instead of standing in opposition to those who torment their friends and neighbors. This was a difficult book to read, as Miano does not shy away from any of the gruesome details of the militants' and villagers' actions, but it is an unforgettable and necessary contribution to African literature, which applies beyond that continent as well.

51lilisin
Ago 20, 2013, 11:41 am

50 -
I just skimmed your review as I don't want too many details of the book but just seeing how grim it is makes me feel better about having owned the book for about 5 years and having not had the mood to open it yet. It does still look at me though wondering when it'll get read.

52kidzdoc
Editado: Ago 21, 2013, 5:21 pm

Massacre River by René Philoctète



"What isn't possible when power turns stupid?"

We people from over here and over there—we are, in the end, the people of a single land.

The Caribbean island of Hispaniola is shared by two countries, Haiti to the west and the much larger Dominican Republic to the east. The two nations are separated by a latitudinal border, part of which is formed by the Dajabon River, which is also known as Massacre River. Haiti is populated primarily by its African descendants, and it is the poorest country in the Caribbean and the Americas; the Dominican Republic contains a much richer mixture of people from Spain and other European countries, East and West Asia, and other Caribbean countries, including Haiti, and it has the second largest economy in the Caribbean.

Both countries have longstanding histories of colonization and subjugation by Western powers, violent civil wars, oppressive dictators, and bloody border battles. Because of the long porous border and the marked difference in the economies and standards of living of the two nations, Haitians have for years crossed over to the Dominican Republic to find work and better lives for themselves, and particularly in the border towns they often established friendship and not infrequently found love with their Dominican neighbors.

In 1930 the notorious dictator General Rafael Trujillo was "elected" president of the Dominican Republic, after a violent campaign in which many of his opponents were eliminated. Trujillo held great admiration for Adolf Hitler, particularly his views on racial purity, and later in that decade he declared the Dominican Republic was a country of white people, in stark contrast to its black neighbors to the west but also in opposition to his country's mixed race majority. The blancos de la tierra (whites of the land) were revered and rewarded, whereas darker skinned Dominicans were reviled and punished.

As part of this effort, Trujillo embarked on a campaign to rid the country of as many Haitians as possible, supposedly to prevent them from robbing their Dominican neighbors, but in actuality to achieve greater racial purity. He focused this effort on the border between the two nations, especially the region adjacent to Massacre River, and in a six day campaign of terror in October 1937 tens of thousands of Haitians were brutally murdered by soldiers in the Dominican Army. This act of genocide became known as the Parsley Massacre, as Dominican soldiers would show dark skinned residents of the border towns a sprig of parsley, and ask them to say the word for it in Spanish, perejil. The Creole speaking Haitians often could not pronounce the word properly, and those who failed to do so were beheaded with machetes on the spot, or taken to fields where they were executed by firing squads.

Massacre River is a novel about the Parsley Massacre, which is centered around a young couple who are deeply in love with each other, the Dominican Pedro Brito and his beautiful Haitian wife Adèle, who live close to the river. A premonition of the massacre comes in the form of an ominous large raptor, which swoops over and shadows the town and its residents. As the townspeople become aware of Trujillo's plans, Adèle becomes fearful for her own safety. Pedro attempts to comfort her and allieviate her concerns, and leaves her at home to go to work on the fateful day that soldiers enter the town. As word comes in on the radio of the massacre that is taking place, with the death toll in each town enthusiastically announced by broadcasters, Pedro rushes to get back home to find out what has happened to Adèle. When he returns he and other workers are met with a surreal and horrific scene, as the heads of the massacre's victims bounce around the bloodied town, giving voice to the day's events and demanding justice for the atrocities inflicted upon them by singing machetes swung by men loyal to Trujillo, "the Lord of demented death".

Massacre River is a superb story, which uses magical realism to both blunt the gruesome details and highlight the profound effects of the Parsley Massacre on Haitians and their Dominican neighbors. It is also a touching love story and, oddly enough, it contains an element of humor, which would seem to be inappropriate in the face of genocide but actually permits a view of the humanity of the Haitian and Dominican people and their respect and love for each other, which is unaffected by this tragedy. René Philoctète was one of the most revered authors in Haiti, but to date this is the only novel of his that has been translated into English, and he is not well known outside of the Caribbean. I enjoyed this unique and entertaining novel, and I hope that more of his work will be available in the near future.

53banjo123
Ago 21, 2013, 3:13 pm

Great reviews, Darryl and Rebecca. Now I want to read all of those books.

54rebeccanyc
Ago 22, 2013, 6:03 pm

I recently finished Memoirs of a Porcupine by Congolese author Alain Mabanckou. Here is my review.



I loved the voice of the porcupine: sly, perceptive, funny, even wise at times. The porcupine who relates his memoirs is the harmful double of a man named Kibandi. He tells the reader about his life with his band of porcupines (led by "the governor"), how he became a harmful double (most doubles are helpful) when Kibandi's father initiated him at age 11, and what he had to do as Kibandi's harmful double, namely killing people with his quills ("eating" them in porcupine lingo). Ultimately, and strangely, the porcupine survives after Kibandi dies in a way caused his own murderous life (said to be the result of the needs of his "other self"); usually doubles don't survive their human, and so the porcupine thinks about what this means and what he should do in the future.

While this novella is essentially a fable, based on an African legend, I found it difficult not to also read it as an allegory, with the porcupines and other animals, all of whom have their own communities, standing in for Africans and the "monkey cousins," or people, standing in for the European colonizers. It isn't a perfect analogy, but I did find this provocative. I enjoyed this book a lot, and will look for more of Mabanckou's work.

55banjo123
Ago 22, 2013, 8:23 pm

I am posting the following non-fiction read, because I feel it will help me gain better understanding of African literature.

King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild

This is exactly the kind of non-fiction that I like to read. It’s definitely got some meat to it, but is written for a popular audience. Facts and history are wrapped into character-driven story. Hochschild explains his references well enough that I didn’t have to keep running to Wikipedia. The book is gossipy and engaging. I felt that by reading this book, I got a better picture of what colonialism did to the African continent. I was surprised to find out how much I didn’t know about this topic. King Leopold’s rule led to the death of half the population of the Congo—about 10 million people.

Colonialism, I am afraid was just horrible. In Congo, there was a lot of money to be made out of harvesting rubber. All of that money went to the King Leopold and his companies, none of it stayed in Africa. Harvesting rubber is labor intensive. For other kinds of work in the Congo, Europeans had been easily able to enslave Africans, as porters, etc. For rubber harvesting, it was a little trickier as the laborers needed to go into the forest to tap the rubber trees. They were able to coerce Congolese labor by kidnapping the women, and not releasing them unless the workers brought in the rubber. The women, of course, were kept in very poor conditions and many of them died.

When I mentioned this book to my daughter, she said “Oh that’s where they had the severed hands.” Apparently, they actually are teaching something in public schools these days. The Force Publique, a local military force led and paid by the Belgians were required to provide a hand of their victims as proof when they had shot and killed someone, as it was believed that they would otherwise use the munitions (imported from Europe at considerable cost) for hunting food. Sometimes hands were severed from still-living victims.

King Leopold’s rule was so grisly that it actually led to the first human rights campaign in Europe. Many prominent people, including Mark Twain and A. Conan Doyle joined the The British Congo Reform Association founded by Edmund Morel and Roger Casement. This did lead eventually to some change in the Congo, although this movement was still Euro-centric.

One would hope that Colonialism was not as bloody in other parts of Africa. However, Hochschild tells us that there was less difference between the Congo and other African Colonies than the British reformers liked to believe.

One of the weaknesses of this book is that the voices are pretty much all European whites, as the Congo did not have literature and so Congolese were not able to leave a written legacy. And with the extent of the cultural destruction, oral histories would also be disrupted. Hochschild is very aware of this issue and discusses it in depth.

I am very glad that I read this book and hope that it will help me to have a better understanding of modern Africa.

56rebeccanyc
Ago 25, 2013, 1:04 pm

I just read The Bottom of the Jar by Moroccan author Abdellatif Laâbi. Here's my review.



The heart of this undoubtedly semi-autobiographical novel is the delightful story of a young boy, Namouss, living in Fez, in Morocco, apparently in the early 1950s. The independence movement against the French is getting underway, but leaves the boy and his family largely untouched in the central part of the book which is told in the third person. However, this story of Namouss's childhood is bookended by the narrator, writing in 1989 in the first person, watching the fall of the Berlin Wall with his aging father and recounting, at the beginning, the tale of his older brother's marriage and, at the end, the impact of the independence movement. Laâbi, a leading Moroccan poet, novelist, and playwright, was imprisoned by the Moroccan government in the post-independence era, and a literary journal he started banned; he lives in exile in France.

The novel poetically captures the sights, sounds, and smells of Fez and its medina (or walled section) and souks, as well as the characters of Namouss's family, including his mother Ghita with her vivid and creative complaints and comments, his hardworking and patient father Driss, and a strange but entertaining uncle, among others. Through "Radio Medina," or word of mouth, everybody knows everything that is happening. The family is Muslim, and so the reader learns about the way women must cover themselves up when nonfamily members are around (in fact, Namouss's mother rarely seems to go out on her own; her husband, a saddlemaker by trade, sends food home for her to cook). The pranks Namouss and his friends engage in are entertaining, and the few trips the family takes outside Fez to the countryside reveal the beauty of the natural landscape.

Namouss is thrilled to go to school and enchanted by learning new words, a poet in the making, no doubt. As the first person narrator says towards the end:

"The sky was never quiet for long in Fez. You only had to bother looking at it. Why did it fascinate me so much since I had never heard the word "poetry" and could only muster "stars" to describe the myriad celestial bodies glistening in the night heavens?

My word hoard was a meager, meager affair. The inability to pin down the objects in my mind and say "you are called this, and you that" infuriated me. And since I have recognized you and named you with my own mouth, come now, stop being so mysterious, follow me. Jump into my pocket and let's go! You will be companions during my journey, my confidantes, and should we encounter danger along the road, you will become the tongue of my cry and the instruments of my courage."
p. 204

The residents of Fez apparently think highly of themselves compared to both other Moroccans and the French colonialists. At the very end of the book, the older Namouss imagines his now dead mother saying, about the fall of the Berlin Wall, "A falling wall . . . it can't have been built very solidly. The walls of Fez are still standing after all."

57rebeccanyc
Ago 25, 2013, 1:15 pm

In reading about Laâbi, I came across this interview with him in which he criticizes the use of the term "Francophone" because it doesn't adequately distinguish the differing nationalities and perspectives of authors who write in French and sees it as a holdover from the colonial era.

58banjo123
Ago 26, 2013, 12:16 am

Great review, Rebecca and thanks for posting the link to that very interesting article. It seems that the use of language and which language is used is a common dilemma for writers in formerly-colonized nations. I am now reading Algerian White and that's a theme that runs through the book.

59rebeccanyc
Ago 30, 2013, 8:14 am

I just finished The Bridge of Beyond by Simone Schwarz-Bart, from Guadeloupe.



This heartbreakingly beautiful novel is at once a celebration of human survival and joy, a meditation on the evil and tragedy and sorrow that are also an integral part of life, a vivid description of a time, place, and way of life, and a penetrating look at what it means to be black and a woman in post-slavery but still colonial Guadeloupe. In prose that can be poetic, mythical, and down-to-earth, Simone Schwarz-Bart tells the tale of four generations of women in the Lougandor family. The tale is narrated by the youngest, Télumée, who focuses on her life and that of Toussine, the grandmother who raised her and who is also know as Queen Without a Name. By portraying Télumée's life from her early childhood through young womanhood, love found and love betrayed and lost, foster motherhood, and into old age, Schwarz-Bart also portrays the life of the communities in which she lives.

The women in this book experience a world of contrast: the bliss of love and the heartache when it is no more, the blessing of children and the unbearable pain of their loss, the pleasures of tending their crops and gardens and taking care of their homes and the viciousness of working on the sugar plantations and their factories and in the homes of white colonialists, the richness of the natural world and the poverty of their homes and lives. The beauty and lushness of the landscape, its sounds and smells, are ever-present, mythical tales are interwoven with the story of the Lougandor women, some women are witches and healers, and death is always waiting. Queen Without a Name and her friend, the witch Ma Cia, are fascinating and deep and wise women. This is an intense book, and I had to read it a little bit at a time so as not to be overwhelmed.

Early in the book, soon after Télumée meets her first love, Elie, Queen Without a Name tells her:

" 'My little ember," she'd whisper, 'if you ever get on a horse, keep good hold of the reins so that it's not the horse that rides you.' And as I clung to her, breathing in her nutmeg smell. Queen Without a Name would sigh, caress me, and go on. 'Behind one pain there is another. Sorrow is a wave without end. But the horse mustn't ride you; you must ride it.' ", pp. 72-73

This metaphor is carried throughout the book, as is another about needing the wind to lift the sails of one's boat and move forward in life no matter how deep and paralyzing the sorrow and the pain. "And so, throughout all her last days, Grandmother was whistling up a wind for me, to fill my sails so I could resume my voyage." In fact, the original tile of the book is "Pluie et vent sur Télumée miracle," or "Rain and Wind on Télumée Miracle" ("Miracle" is a nickname she gets late in life).

Schwarz-Bart's writing is so beautiful and so wise that I marked many passages as I read. Here are two.

The Queen to Télumée:

" 'My child, you will feel just like one deceased, your flesh will be dead flesh and you will no longer feel the knife thrusts. And then you will be born again, for life were not good, in spite of everything, the earth would be uninhabited. It must be that something remains after even the greatest sorrows, for men do not want to die before their time. As for you, little coconut flower, don't you bother your head about all that. Your job is to shine now, so shine. And when the day comes that misfortune says to you, Here I am --- then at least you'll have shone.' " pp. 138-139

Télumée reflecting in old age.

"It's a long time now since I left off my battle robe, and a long time since I've been able to hear the battle's din. I am too old, much too old for all that, and the only pleasure left me on earth is to smoke, to smoke my old pipe here in my doorway, curled up on my little stool, in the sea breeze that caresses my old carcass like soothing balm. Sun risen, sun set, I am always there on my little stool, far away, eyes gazing into space, seeking my time through the smoke of my pipe, seeing again all the downpours that have drenched me and the winds that have buffeted me. But rains and winds are nothing if first one star rises for you in the sky, then another, then another as happened to me, who very nearly carried off all the happiness in the world. And even if the stars set, they have shone, and their light still twinkles there where it has come to rest: in your second heart." p. 238

As a side note, one aspect of the language of this book took some getting used to: Schwarz-Bart's characters refer to themselves, proudly, as Negresses and Negroes. The edition I read was just reissued by NYRB, but the translation is the original 1974 one (based on the 1972 French original), and my assumption is that these are literal translations of what Schwarz-Bart wrote, and of how her characters really would have talked, although they sound odd to modern ears.

60banjo123
Set 2, 2013, 3:22 pm

Algerian White by Assia Djebar.

I think that I picked the wrong book by Djebar to start with. She writes beautifully and has won several prestigious awards. She is known for her feminist stance, which is interesting to me.

This book is written as a conversation with a group of Algerian writers and intellectuals who had died since the 1956 struggle for independence. It would have meant more to me if I knew more about Algerian history and literature.

I wish that I did know more. For instance, she quotes these awesome lines from Kateb Yacine:

Thus to die is to live
War and cancer of the blood
Slow or violent, to each his death
And it always is the same
For those who have learned
To read in the shadows
And who, eyes closed
Have not stopped writing
Thus to die is to live.

Unfortunately, since I did not have the background in Algerian culture, reading this book was a little like eavesdropping on someone else’s family dinner. Interesting, but at times baffling.

One thing that I noticed was the ambivalence about language, and which language one uses. It must be hard to be a writer in a colonial or post-colonial country who loves language, but has learned to love the language of the oppressor.

Djebar reflects on how she conversed with her friends in French, rather than in Arabic:

“Thus there came to light, in a light, gray by its very glitter, the noise of language, their language, the language of all three of them, each in turn and all together, with me too: a French with neither nerves, nor veins, nor even memories, a French both abstract and carnal, warm in tis consonances. “Their” French, the French of my friends—so they disappeared, will I finally end up knowing it, believing it—whereas, freed from the shroud of the past, the French of the old days now begins to be generated within us, between us, transformed into a language of the dead.”

61Nickelini
Set 5, 2013, 3:05 pm

I've decided to read Nikolski, by Quebecois author Nicolas Dickner.

62banjo123
Set 5, 2013, 4:01 pm

Nikolski looks interesting--looking forward to your review.

63banjo123
Set 8, 2013, 7:32 pm

God’s Bits of Wood by Sengalese writer Sembene Ousmane was first published in 1960. It is about the Dakar-Niger railway strike on 1947-48. The book has a political message, but is more than that.

I read this book for the Francophone theme in the Reading Globally group. It was written in French, but feels less “French” and more African compared to some of the other books I have read from this challenge. Ousmane’s style reminds me of Achebe, with it’s focus on community norms and the community story, and in the concrete story-telling mode. For example:

“It was an afternoon in med-October, at the end of the season of rains, and as was the custom at this time of day the women of the Bakayoko house were gathered in the courtyard. Only the women. As they went about their household tasks they chattered constantly, each of them completely indifferent to what the others were saying. Seated a little apart, with her back against the hard, clay wall, was old Niakoro. “

I enjoyed reading this book. The style is accessible and I grew to really care about the characters and the outcome of the strike. This book enhanced my respect for early labor leaders: the suffering for the strikers and their families was intense, but they were able to persevere.

The role of women in a traditional Moslem society is one of the major themes of this book. Women and men live in parallel worlds, which is one of the reasons, I think, that polygamy can work. As the story unfolds, we see the women taking more power and becoming more active in the strike.

64banjo123
Set 9, 2013, 8:52 pm

I Tituba, Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Conde

This is Conde’s imagining of Tituba’s story. I became interested in reading this book after reading The Crucible last year. Tituba was the slave belonging to Samuel Parris who was one of the first to be accused of practicing witchcraft during the Salem witch trials. Usually, that story is told from the point of view of the Puritans. Conde tells the story from the point of view of Tituba, a slave from Barbados with strong ties to Africa.

This book was written in 1986, and the edition I read was translated by Richard Philcox and published in 1992 with an introduction by Angela Davis. Conde imagines Tituba as a mythic, not always realistic, character, and tells a story of sexual and racial oppression that stretches across continents.

I really liked this book. One strong point was the continuity of identity between Africa, the Caribbean, and the US. The book does have some weaknesses. In the afterward, Conde explains that s/he meant the book to have “mock-epic’ qualities. This isn’t entirely clear in the reading, so one is apt to take Tituba’s character as more serious and realistic than Conde intended.

65rebeccanyc
Set 10, 2013, 9:54 am

Broken Glass by Alain Mabanckou



novelist Alain Mabanckou is a wonderful writer who captures the voice of his narrator, Broken Glass, and the people whose stories he tells, and whose language flows, and this is true even though he has an unusual way of writing, using only commas as punctuation, so there are in effect no sentences, just paragraphs, and even those "sentences" as paragraphs have no capital letter at the beginning and no period at the end, yet there is never any trouble following along with what Mabanckou is saying, although it may take a little getting used to, and it surely must have been difficult to write that way, as I am finding as I write this paragraph, and equally if not more difficult for the translator to convey the feeling of this writing style in English, so now, because this is not an easy way for me to write, even though I often write long run-on sentences myself, I'm going to stop and write the rest of this review in a more comfortable, for me, style

This is the second book by Mabanckou that I've read, although he wrote it first, and I didn't warm to it quite as much as I did to Memoirs of a Porcupine, although it did grow on me as I was reading it. It is narrated by Broken Glass, a 60-something alcoholic former teacher who now spends nights and days at Credit Gone West, a bar run by his friend, the Stubborn Snail, who has visions of fame and grandeur for what is in essence a dive. Stubborn Snail, because he worries about Broken Glass and because he is seeking publicity, gives Broken Glass a notebook to record the story of the bar. At first, Broken Glass tells the stories that some of the habitués of Credit Gone West feel compelled to tell him, and these stories are generally crude, and often scatological, but nevertheless humorous and understanding of the frailties of humanity and the harshness of life. In the second part, Broken Glass moves into his own story, writing more or less backwards in time, and the reader learns how he wound up losing his job and his wife and ending up more or less broken down hanging out in a seedy bar, despite his love of language and his familiarity with the great works of literature of the world.

For one of the fascinating things about this novel is the way Broken Glass weaves the titles of novels into his narration, as well as references to what happened in some of those novels. To give a feel for this, here is an example:

"they swore he'd be eating boiled potatoes, become a beggar, one of God's bits of wood, sleeping in a barrel, like a certain ancient philosopher, and still the Stubborn Snail stood firm, determined as a chess player, and the years went by in dubious battle, till his envious components got bored of nitpicking, he resisted the confederacy of dunces, and the other barkeepers all called him names . . ." p.19

One of the things I liked about this novel is that it seems that Broken Glass himself got more insight into his life as he wrote about his history -- the same experience the reader is having -- and begins to see that some people, such as the woman who sells him his bicycle chicken, actually care about him (not that this changes the decision he makes towards the end of the book). This is a much more clever and complicated book that it seems at the beginning.

66rebeccanyc
Set 10, 2013, 11:06 am

Rue du Retour by Abdellatif Laâbi



This harrowing but moving memoir of Laâbi's return from prison, with flashbacks to his experiences as a prisoner, has had many titles. The original French title, "Le chemin des ordalies," means "the path of ordeals," the English title translates as "street of the return," and the title of Laâbi's translation of his own book from French into Arabic is "The Fool of Hope." All of these titles express aspects of the memoir.

Laâbi was imprisoned by the post-colonial Moroccan government for close to ten years for "crimes of opinion," as a leading poet and writer, founder of an influential literary journal, and contributor to a political journal. He was eventually freed because of protests from other countries. At the beginning of his imprisonment, he was tortured, and the descriptions of torture were almost impossible to read, although I felt obliged to because reading about them is not in anywhere the same league as experiencing them. This part, brief though it was, certainly makes one think of all the torture that has taken place throughout history, and that which is happening now, and that which our own government has engaged in.

The memoir intersperses Laâbi's feelings on re-entering the world with his memories of imprisonment, with feelings and thoughts he addresses to his beloved wife, who he refers to as Awdah, which means "return," and with myths and stories. All in all, this is an extremely poetic work, despite the horrors it describes and alludes to, and the complexity of return. Here is part of a letter he sends to his wife while he is imprisoned:

"I dream a lot lately, threatened dreams, wandering, beset by obstacles, but beautiful, restorative glimpses of your presence. So yesterday, I dreamed about Qods (their daughter). She was on my knee, I was teasing her, laughing with her like a madman. Did you realize that dreams end up creating certain atmospheres, turning familiar places into something new. It's like that for me, there are some places I always go back to, a kind of farm near some caves by the sea, a huge Moroccan house which reminds me both of the Alhambra and one of the houses I used to live in, a kind of apartment in a building but open to the sky with doorless rooms. For the most part these places are only different combinations of the same prison-space. Not always, for in some of the dreams I don't feel completely affected by this space. All the same, the capacity to dream is prodigious. And so important for a prisoner." p. 75

One of the peculiarities of this book is that it is written in the second person, that is Laâbi refers, presumably to himself, as "you" throughout, e.g., "You are free," "You open the sack with your name on it," "You reassure yourself," etc. It was not clear to me why Laâbi did this, perhaps as a distancing mechanism, perhaps to allude to the universality of the prison experience, although he is very particular about his own experiences, as a poet would be. Laâbi addresses this in his epilogue:

"More worrying still, this YOU that you consecrated as hero or chief character, who will fall into the trap of believing that it has anything to do with an individual? Will it not be understood as WE? What then have you put of yourself into the mouths of others and what of others into your own mouth? And with what justification?" p. 177

Certainly, despite the horrific cruelty that Laâbi experienced, he was able to go on and write as charming and almost light-hearted a novel based on his childhood as The Bottom of the Jar. That speaks to his ability to somehow separate these vastly different experiences, as well, of course, to his talents as a writer. Towards the end of the memoir, he muses on how he has recovered:

"Little by little you recovered from your astonishments, You rediscovered reflexes that you thought you had lost forever . . .Your astonishment bumped less every day against the rock of realities and good sense. Already there was memory and forgetting. Your new life already had an age.

Then there were the great questions. Not that they had been absent after the first steps you had taken during the starry night of your deliverance. From that instant you had said to yourself: Look at me, returned to the multiple body from which I had been snatched. How shall I find again the land and the people? How shall I create again with my hands their fertility? But now, you had seen. The earth had turned. The rivers had recovered their normal courses. The social puzzle had been fitted together."
? p. 163

And finally:

"Free. Old salt of the prison seas. If you are now free, it's because you will carry this citadel for the rest of your life, engraved on your heart." p. 175

67Nickelini
Set 10, 2013, 2:02 pm

Quebecois literature

Nikolski, Nicolas Dickner, 2005/ translator Lazer Lederhendler, 2008


Cover comments: I love this playful quirky cover. The whole book (not just the cover) was designed by CS Richardson, who designed the lovely book I read last (Conceit). The actual images are from The Narrative of the Perry Expedition of Japan, 1858.

Comments: Like its cover, Nikolski is one quirky and playful book. Noah, Joyce, and an unnamed person are connected through their relation to Jonas Doucet, who was last seen in Nikolski in the Aleutian Islands. Through most of the novel they all live in the same neighbourhood of Montreal, but they only know each other tangentially. Nikolski is all about connections and separations.

What I liked: Nikolski is very different from anything I've read before, although there was something in the writing style that reminded me of Douglas Coupland--and then I read in an interview that Dickner is a great admired of Coupland and was inspired by his novels. (one point for me!)

Dickner makes heavy use of some interesting and unusual motifs, including nomads, islands, Moby Dick, fish and floods, garbage and archaeology, indigenous people and pirates, to name just a few. I look forward to rereading the book at some point and spotting more of these.

What I didn't like: This book was a quick and easy read, but I found it too disjointed, which is not something I dislike in books very often. Also, the characters were too static and lacking in development; however, this book has been called a fairy tale, in which case lack of character depth would be expected.

Recommended for: the original French version of this book won slews of awards, and the English translation won Canada Reads. I really can't see everyone in Canada reading this book. If you like very jumbled quirky books though, give it a try.

Rating a marginal 4 out of 5 stars.

Why I Read This Now: not sure.

68GlebtheDancer
Set 10, 2013, 5:00 pm

Some really interesting stuff turning up in this thread. Very diverse, and a great idea for a theme. I was wondering, banjo123, if, when September is finished, you fancied summarising the thread. I know it's all there for us to see, but I would love a little summary of what everyone has dug up, and where it was from.

69rebeccanyc
Set 10, 2013, 7:04 pm

#68 We also keep the threads "open" after the quarter is over, since people are often inspired by their reading to continue. And they're great resources, as you point out. All the previous theme reads can be accessed from the Group Page.

70rebeccanyc
Set 11, 2013, 5:46 pm

Not to take away from the next three weeks of this exciting theme read, but SassyLassy and Steven have done a great job of setting up the thread for the October - December South American theme read for those of you who want to start thinking about what you'll be reading next quarter.

71banjo123
Set 11, 2013, 10:47 pm

Great reviews Rebecca and Joyce!
A thread wrap-up WOULD be a nice idea. I will try to do that at the end of September.

And thanks for the link to the South American theme read, Rebecca. I have mixed feelings, because I have a lot more Francophone reading I'd like to do, but I am also looking forward to South America.

72SassyLassy
Set 12, 2013, 11:51 am

Québec
cross posted from Club Read 2013



Wild Cat by Jacques Poulin translated from the French by Sheila Fischman
first published as Chat sauvage in 1997

This book was a delight to read on so many levels that I certainly didn't expect to find even more to ponder when I got to the end, but that was exactly what Poulin provided.

The narrator is Jack, who has created a niche for himself with a very old fashioned kind of work. He is a scribe, a public writer, writing letters for people, doing translation, and working on the odd freelance article. In his office hangs a picture of the "Crouching Scribe", a four thousand year old statue of a man whom he sees as full of gentleness and infinite patience, a man whom he regards as a model and spiritual guide.

Jack appears to lead a fairly settled life, despite some recent heart problems. He has the second floor flat in a house in old Québec. Above him is the owner, Kim, a psychotherapist and companion. Below him, the ground floor flat is always unlocked, available for street kids needing a temporary shelter.

The scribe takes great care over his work. His visits to used bookstores yield wonderful old volumes of letters. He has developed a small library of them, memorizing quotes to insert where he feels an extra added touch was needed. Since letters are written while the client is there, he would work and rework phrases after hours, storing them up for his sessions to gently guide his clients who were often at a loss for words. Great thought went into his work. As Jack describes it:
My clients knew nothing about this turmoil. I wanted my relations with them to be characterized by confidence and serenity, and my office was set up to suggest precisely that. The walls were a peach colour that held the light and softened it. My computer and its accessories were relegated to a corner of the room, behind a screen. I liked to work in a warm and slightly old fashioned atmosphere. My desk held only a bouquet of flowers, a pad of paper, and my Waterman pen. I wanted as few objects as possible between the client and me: no file folder, no appointment book, no telephone-- nothing that could give the client the impression that he was not unique in the world.

Although Jack's world is small and contained, he gets to see the larger world through his clients, many of whom he has worked with for years.

One evening, an odd sort of man appeared and without dictating anything, left almost immediately. Jack became obsessed by him, determined to unravel his story. He discovered the man was a calèche driver, taking tourists through the round of old Québec. One night he saw the Old Man with a young girl, the girl he would later know as Macha. The two had words and the young girl disappeared into a youth hostel.

Poulin leads the reader on gently, much as Jack coaxed his clients along. The details of Jack's daily life are presented in such a way that at times the reading is more like a series of mental images. We see his surroundings and his books, know his people, all without paying any particular attention to how Poulin manages to do this. Jack's journey with the Old Man and Macha is the reader's journey too. In the end, the reader must come to terms with Jack's future just as he must.



The Crouching Scribe, Egyptian 5th Dynasty 2494-2345 BCE

73rebeccanyc
Set 20, 2013, 4:37 pm

I'm including this review here, even though Le Clezio is technically from France, because he considers himself both French and Mauritian and because this book is about Africa. But I realize that it doesn't really fall under the guidelines for this theme read!

Onitsha by J.M.G. Le Clezio



This cover is a detail from a painting entitled "August Visitor (Arrival of White Men in an Ibibio Village" by E. E. Ekefrey.

The more I thought about what I should say about this book in my review, the more I realized how complex the novel really is and how much is left unsaid. It starts as the partially autobiographical story of Fintan, a boy who seems to be about 11 or 12 years old, traveling with his Italian mother (whom he calls Maou) by ship from the Atlantic coast of France to Onitsha on the Niger River in Nigeria. It is 1948, the war is over, and Fintan's English father, Geoffroy, whom he has never met, has sent for Maou and Fintan to join him in Onitsha.

The first part of the novel depicts the voyage, which the reader sees through both Fintan's and Maou's eyes, as they enter a foreign world and feel the impact of both the climate and the racist/colonial structure of the society. None of this is didactic; it emerges from the perceptions and actions of the characters. The later parts of the novel take place in and around Onitsha, except for the very end when the family leaves Africa.

In Onitsha, once again, each member of the family reacts to the world in which they find themselves -- Maou and Fintan mostly among the Africans, Geoffroy largely among the colonial English, those engaged in commerce, as he is, and those representing the government. But Geoffroy has another interest, one which drew him to Africa in the first place. He is convinced that the last black queen of Meroë, part of ancient Egypt, led her people up the Nile and across the mountains to found another kingdom on the banks of the Niger, perhaps at a mystical site known as Aro Chuku. (I did a lot of Googling at this point.) His imaginings of this journey, shown in another typeface in my edition, are interspersed with the rest of the novel, and progress as the novel progresses. Geoffroy also comes to think of a mysterious young woman, Ayo, who is unable to speak or hear and whose past is uncertain, as a reincarnation of the long ago black queen.

Meanwhile, Maou irritates the colonial powers by showing her disgust with how they treat the Africans, including a group of prisoners hired to dig a swimming pool while still chained together who carry on their work in sight of a dinner party at the district officer's home. Fintan explores the natural world with a slight older friend, Bony, quickly shedding his shoes and socks to run barefoot over the savannah and rocks; he also is becoming aware of sexuality. A mysterious European, Sabine Rodes, who has an "adopted" African son as his servant, as well as some association with the equally mysterious Ayo, also figures in the story.

Le Clezio's writing is beautiful, and he vividly depicts the very different environment the mixed European family finds itself in, and how they react to it.

"It was the beginning of the rainy season. The big river was the color of lead beneath the clouds, the wind flattened the treetops with violence. Maou no longer left the house in the afternoon. She stayed on the veranda, listening to the rising storms, far off towards the source of the Omerun. Heat crackled the red earth before the rain. The air danced above the tin roofs. From where she sat she could see the river, the islands. She had lost all desire to write, or even to read. She needed only to look, to listen, as if time were of no more importance." pp. 119-120

Beyond the tale of a boy experiencing a new world, and the picture of colonialist racism in action, and the dream-like story of an historic or mythical migration, and the vivid depiction of a time and a place, this book also seems to be about voyages of various kinds, isolation of various kinds, and the urge to write. Geoffroy travels from England to Italy and then to Africa, Maou with her mother and aunt and Fintan from Italy to France and with only Fintan to Africa, the black queen of Meroë from the Nile to the Niger, and finally the family back to England and France. All are alone in a way, finding their place in Africa on their own, Maou and Geoffroy coming from different parts of Europe and leaving their own families behind. And each writes something at some point in the story: Maou letters to Geoffroy, Fintan a story of a girl who takes "a long voyage" to Africa, and Geoffroy his notes about the epic journey of the queen of Meroë. Left unsaid, but looming in the background, are the devastation World War II brought to the Europe they have left and the impending anti-colonial upheavals in the Africa they leave at the end. As the mysterious Sabine Rodes says to Maou:

"Have a good look about you! The days are numbered for all of us, all of us! For good people and bad, for honorable people and for those like me! The empire is finished, signorina, it's crumbling on every side, turning to dust: the great ship of empire is sinking, honorably! You speak of charity, don't you, and your husband lives in his dream world, and meanwhile everything is crumbling around you! But I shan't leave. I shall stay here to see it all, that's my mission, my vocation, to watch the ship go under.", p. 143

(Incidentally, Rodes has already seen a real ship go under in the river, a wreck that figures prominently in the novel.)

At the very end of the book, a now-adult Fintan reflects on how his year in Africa infused his whole life, leaving him with feelings that set him apart from others, and how his experiences there connect him with the then-ongoing war in Biafra.

This is a book that I will continue thinking about for a long time.

74rebeccanyc
Set 22, 2013, 5:57 pm

Blue White Red by Alain Mabanckou
(cross-posted from my Club Read and 75 Books threads)



This is the third book by Mabanckou I've read, but the first he wrote. (It was only translated into English this year.) In it, he takes a look at the lives of Africans who go to live in Paris and the varieties of experiences they have there. It is both a satire of the "Parisians," as they are called, and the prestige which they and their families acquire when they return for visits to their home county (in this case, Congo), and a look at the harsh reality that most undocumented immigrants find when they arrive in the capital of their former colonizer.

The tale starts out with the narrator declaring "I'll manage to get myself out of this" on finding himself imprisoned in a dark cell outside Paris. The scene then shifts back to his village in Congo, where the villagers are all entranced by Moki, a local young man who has done very well for himself in Paris, showering his parents and extended family with expensive gifts including a newly built house complete with water and electricity and two cars that they can use for a taxi service. On his yearly visits home, Moki stresses that speaking French is different from speaking "in French," and he is quite the local dandy, wearing expensive designer clothes and stressing how stylish he is. The narrator, Massala-Massala, is eager to try his luck in Paris too, and Moki arranges for him to get a passport and a tourist visa. This section of the book is quite satirical and very funny in places.

In the second part of the book, Massala-Massala is in Paris, but it is nothing like what he has imagined. He is living with a dozen or more other immigrants in what is apparently a single room on the top floor (no elevator) of an eight-story building (which may have been condemned), lit only by a skylight. Gradually, he meets some of the movers and shakers of the immigrant community, who clearly are making their living illegally and, once he has been provided with new false documentation (since tourist visas expire), Moki introduces him to one of the most important movers and shakers who will in turn introduce Massala-Massala, now known as Marcel Bonaventure because that's the name on his papers, into the world of the black market. In this section, Mabanckou paints a picture of African immigrant life in Paris, and Massala-Massala meditates on how he has not lived up to his father's guidance.

I enjoyed this book, and I felt it presented a damning look at postcolonial attraction to the culture and life of the former colonizer but, having read later works by Mabanckou, I think he's become an even more interesting writer as he's written more.

As a side note, I was interested that Mabanckou's epigraph for one of the sections was a quote from a poem by Abdellatif Laâbi, some of whose work I've also recently read.

75OshoOsho
Set 28, 2013, 6:51 pm

76Amusedbythis
Set 29, 2013, 3:44 pm

Whymaggiemay suggested that I join this group. I finished an appropriate book just under the wire!

I just finished Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. It is the biography of Dr. Paul Farmer who has spent a good portion of his career treating Haitians. The book is well-written and moving. It describes how Farmer began the global Partners In Health and how he attacked and attacks diseases such as tuberculosis and AIDS on an individual basis as well as globally.

Much of the book and much of his practice is centered in Haiti. I recommend this book not only because it "fits" the theme but also because it illustrates how one man has made a difference in a Francophone nation.

77Nickelini
Nov 20, 2013, 2:54 am

I know this challenge is over, but I'm adding this for anyone who is looking for more literature that fits this category:

Ru, Kim Thuy, 2009, tranlated from French, Sheila Fischman, 2012


Cover comments: I think this cover is gorgeous on its own as a piece of art, but also because it captures that "Asian woman in Montreal" feeling. I love the Asian motif softly printed over the picture, like a snowflake on a Christmas card. Also, the paper is heavy and textured, almost like watercolour stock. When I flipped open the cover and saw that the book was designed by CS Richardson--the rock star of book design--I thought, "of course it was!".

Why I Read This Now: my bookclub selection for November

Rating: This is a 4 - 5 star book, which is reflected in its having won the Governor Generals award when it was published originally in French, and then later, nominated for the English language Giller Prize. However, my bookclub partner gave me the book 36 hours before our meeting, which technically is not a problem as it is only 141 pages long and has a lot of white space. The problem was that during those 36 hours I was deeply interested in a completely different book that I have going, and didn't want to break to read this. I was quite resentful actually, although I must say the inventiveness and good writing won me over. So for me it wasn't quite a 4 or 5, but that's what it deserves.

Comments: (when is she going to get to the comments, you say). Ru is a deep and complex novel about a growing up during the Vietnam War, becoming a boat person, and immigrating to Quebec. It had a intensely personal tone to it that makes me think it's more autobiographical than the author admits to (sort of like Michael Ondaatje's Cat's Table, my bookclub thought). The story is told in vignettes and jumps around in time. The writing is beautiful and evocative, but not so esoteric that the reader has to sweat over every sentence just to figure out what she's talking about. I have to admit that I just let the art wash over me at times, and I'd get more out of it on a second reading. Which, it being so short, would be an easy and pleasurable task (and note to all English uni profs out there--consider teaching this novel).

Everyone liked it, no one loved it. The main complaint was that the jumps in time combined with the vignettes made it too vague. Most people wanted more story with each piece. I agree, although because I was eager to return to my other novel, I didn't really care. Sorry, Kim Thuy.

We also had an interesting discussion on how subtly pro-Canadian this was (something I wouldn't have picked up on my own), and had the author written the same book after moving to the US instead, bookclubs down there would be saying "USA! USA!" That was a good laugh. We also compared it to our last book, Little Bee, which was about another young woman from a war torn country trying to immigrate to the UK, and how different their experiences were. But two completely different books, and two different stories. Both books are good reads, but it was interesting to see the links between two books that we read back-to-back at random.

Recommended for: Despite its accolades, I probably wouldn't have picked up this novel on my own, just because it doesn't fall within my areas of interest. However, it is a fine book, and if it sounds at all interesting to you, you should definitely track down a copy. After all, it's only 141 short pages.

78kidzdoc
Dez 1, 2013, 1:49 pm

Blue White Red by Alain Mabanckou



Alain Mabanckou's debut novel is narrated by Massala-Massala, a young Congolese man who is a neighbor of Moki, a slightly older man who is revered by the villagers where his parents and brothers live in luxury. Moki is a Parisian, one of the few Congolese who has emigrated to Paris and found success there. He is welcomed like royalty when he makes his annual return to his home during the dry season, as he represents the hopes and dreams of his people. He dresses in the latest Parisian fashions, hands out gifts to extended family members and friends, speaks proper French French instead of speaking in French, quotes de Maupassant, Saint-Exupéry and Baudelaire freely, causes local girls to swoon openly in his presence, and holds court at his father's home and in local bars, as he talks about the French capital, his opulent life, and what it takes to succeed there: "Paris is a big boy. Not for little kids." In the Congo, Parisians like Moki are revered, whereas Peasants, those emigrants who live in towns outside of Paris as they pursue higher education, don't dress like dandies, and associate with Congolese villagers as equals instead of as lesser beings, are viewed with disdain.

Massala-Massala decides to emigrate to Paris, and with the help of his father, his uncle and Moki, he manages to get a visa and passport, and travels by air to Paris with his idol. However, instead of the wealth and easy living that Moki has promised, he quickly discovers the truth about the sordid lives of African immigrants in France, most of whom live there illegally and in poverty, as they face the constant threat of police harassment and deportation back to their homelands. His legal visa soon expires, and he is forced to participate in the underground economy that provides him with enough money for food and lodging, but little else.

Blue White Red, named after the tricolored French flag and the winner of the 1999 Grand prix littéraire d'Afrique noire for the best novel published in France and written by a sub-Saharan Francophone author, is an apt and biting commentary about the sordid lives of African immigrants in France and their countrymen who are caught up in the hype about the greener grass that they believe awaits them in Europe. Although it isn't as well developed as his later novels it is still a very good effort, and a valuable addition to Francophone literature.