Tumgik
#francophone writers from 50+ lands
morebedsidebooks · 2 years
Text
Passage of Tears by Abdourahman A. Waberi
Tumblr media
Djibouti the French, the British or the Italian? To talk like lovers of algebra, this unknown must be solved first. The second unknown is the following: Why here rather than elsewhere?
Why was the Bay of Djibouti so attractive to the Europeans? And what was Djibouti originally? A handful of little magical islands over which history rose and swirled like a hurricane for centuries? A handful of little islands like beauty spots on the neck of a beautiful woman rich in legends and rumours?
  Passage of Tears by Abdourahman A. Waberi, a prolific and distinguished poetic writer, inspiring its title from the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, holds the honour of being the most translated title from the Republic of Djibouti. A key country in the horn of Africa earning its independence from France in 1977 whose literature in French, like Waberi who left for France in 1985, more greatly emerges in the 1990s, beside a period of civil war. This later novel entering a post 9/11 world originally published in 2009 too retains the satire and incisive sociopolitical themes that can mark works from writers hailing from the area.
It follows Djibril working for a transnational economic firm in North America assigned a trip to Djibouti, a country he left at age 18 never looking back. A duplicitous intelligence mission that opens the emotional memories of childhood, self, and his twin brother Djamal. Particularly alternating chapters with near omnipotent rambling religious fanaticism, the philosophical Walter Benjamin throughout, even mentioning music of South African Abdullah Ibrahim. Danger swirls about amongst globalization, terrorism, and foreign machinations driven in power and money against a kind of canvas of the land and its people.
Passage of Tears is described as a book mixing genre but then more it defies such, even plot. Yet Waberi boasting a résumé from around the world knows well his craft. Husband and wife team David and Nicole Ball, sometimes employing footnotes, bring the elegiac novel with unique voices and ironies to a new English-speaking audience. And if it’s any indication to go by the English-language market like others can’t seemingly get enough of Waberi.
 Passage of Tears by Abdourahman A. Waberi is available in English translated by David and Nicole Ball, in print and digital from Seagull Books
2 notes · View notes
morebedsidebooks · 2 years
Text
A Fine of Two Hundred Francs by Elsa Triolet
Tumblr media
IT has been going on for four years now. Four years of separation from some person or thing, four years of a world devoured by nostalgia. A meeting, a return home, only means more suffering when you have to tear yourself away again. Life is spent in partings, in waiting for absent ones....However you pass your time—in killing, trimming your nails, carrying dynamite—what is simply an expectation of catastrophe doesn’t deserve to be called life. Between those who are waiting for each other stretch miles of horror, burning forests, blood-soaked earth, wrecked trains, ruins, mangled bodies, prison walls, whole miles of them....Today does not exist: there is only the sweetness of past days, and an uncertain tomorrow. And what if, on the day the waiting ends, one should have nobody left to love, to find? What if one of the parted ones no longer exists, and the other remains, single, useless, heartbreaking as one glove when the other has been lost? And they were still quite new!...If we could only be sure that while we ourselves are rotting, there are young ones growing up to take our places.
    Born in Moscow in 1896 Ella Yuryevna Kagan, later known as Elsa Triolet, eventually called France home coming to know many major artistic figures. Her work published first in Russian in 1925, due to rising censorship in the Soviet Union by 1938 she chose to write instead in French. It’s particularly straightforward to see how her book A Fine of Two Hundred Francs won a Prix Goncourt, also notable as she was the first woman to do so.  The collection of different stories, illegally published during the last years of WWII, concerning daily life and the French Resistance shows a deft hand at depicting both very human characters and attentiveness to the environments they inhabit.
From 1943 The Lovers of Avignon is like an elegy to two Resistance figures Danièle and Laurent Casanova, the former who would die in a concentration camp of typus. (And should be noted in English translation first published in 1947 omits a part that would go on to become a famous slogan in Communist posters.)
Likewise based on Matisse, The Private Life of Alexis Slavsky, Painter follows an artist whose mother was Jewish and whose mental state and work is dramatically impacted by the war. Further a few months later in 1944 is its sequel, Notebooks Buried Under a Peach Tree. Largely from the perspective of the character Louise, a woman who is involved in the Resistance and bears similarities to Triolet herself.
Last the epilogue and title story for the collection, cleverly invokes a code for the Normandy landings while also the image of the fine for ripping the fabric of a billiard table. Based on real events where villagers greatly encouraged by the message suffer the slow movement in loosening the Nazi grip with heavy reprisals and self-inflicted wounds.
If one has read work by Irène Némirovsky, also Jewish and born in the Russian Empire who too lived in France before and during the war, Triolet is another writer whose work should be sought out.
  A Fine of Two Hundred Francs by Elsa Triolet is available translated in English in print and digital
1 note · View note
morebedsidebooks · 2 years
Text
Bye Bye Babylon by Lamia Ziadé
Tumblr media Tumblr media
I’ve shared books involving the Lebanese Civil War before. There are understandably many, from poetry, children’s books, adult fiction, and nonfiction. Bye Bye Babylon: Beirut 1975-1979 by Lamia Ziadé is a graphic novel memoir published in 2010. Stunning in several ways, it is one of the most visceral I’ve read on the conflict. An album filled with pages of spots, scenery, businesses, homes, family, faces, film and TV, items mundane, ritzy and those of war, the soldiers, militias, flames, firearms, grenades, bombs, death, massacres, assassinations, terror. Interspersed like a journal with all too utilitarian font to the text of even more devastating recollections of childhood yet also the awareness of the adult. There’s a timeline at the back from 1918-1979 too detailing key points that also come up though, the book is most focused on those later years of the 1970s. A designer and illustrator excelling in Pop Art visuals Ziadé manages to put what one might not even think could be expressed on the page. Even though she’s lived in Paris for a long time, she has continued to sort out the trauma, revisit Bye Bye Babylon, and to not look away and bear witness to her country’s history.
  Bye Bye Babylon by Lamia Ziadé is available translated to English by Olivia Snaije, in print from Interlink Graphic      
0 notes
morebedsidebooks · 3 months
Text
Tumblr media
Spanning audiences, genres, and continents my Francophone Writers From 50+ Lands Reading Challenge with #Francophone50 began in 2020 coincidentally marking 50 years of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie. While I needed to set an initial goal I now met, the best part is there are always more writers to become acquainted with. Plus, new examples appear in translation as well. So anytime is still great time to plumb the depths of writing in French from around the world. Bon voyage!
2 notes · View notes
morebedsidebooks · 3 months
Text
2023 Wrap Up
2023 was a real reshuffle of social media and how I use it. Still, I was happy to mark 10 years of book blogging. Success too this year on reading challenges. I greatly reduced my TBR with Beat the Backlist. Plus, I completed the Fortnightly level of the Pick Your Poison Reading Challenge. Lastly, I wrapped my Francophone Writers from 50+ Lands project. Though there are always more such writers to read. I don’t know what 2024 will bring. But as always Happy Reading!
Tumblr media
Read for December:
Chaos, Crossing by Olivia Elias
Queer Palestine by Sa’ed Atshan
Eternal Hoptimist by Lee Blair
Witch Hat Atelier Kitchen
The Passive Vampire by Ghérasim Luca
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Lalana by Michèle Rakotoson
1 note · View note
morebedsidebooks · 9 months
Text
FrenchLit Roundup
French literature is a passion of mine. So I thought I’d post a roundup of reading challenges and notable titles from the French I’ve covered over the years.
Tumblr media
 Farewell, My Queen by Chantal Thomas, translated by Moshie Black
From a respected writer and historian this reflective historical novel, also adapted to film, views troubled days of the Court at Versailles in July 1789 through a devoted servant to Marie-Antoinette, as the revolution will eventually come to knock at the gates.
Tumblr media
Lie With Me by Phillipe Besson, translated by Molly Ringwald
Somewhat autobiographical, this best-selling novel contains the over twenty years later mature reflections of a verbose writer on first love as a teen in 1984 rural France.
Tumblr media
The Lover  by Marguerite Duras, translated by Barbara Bray
A slim book composed of wandering recollections congregating around the affair straddling multiple boundaries of a French teenager whose family was persuaded to settle in Cochinchine (now Southern Vietnam) but finds no fortune, and an older affluent Chinese heir in 1929. Also, containing some of my favourite lines among the famous author’s many works.
Tumblr media
Plus Belle que Fée by Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force
Translated in English as Fairer-than-a-Fairy or simply Fairer first by James Robinson Planché then Laura Christensen, this tale with beautiful people particularly a princess so known, and as so boldly named as to incur the anger of a Faerie Queen also has a Sapphic reading from Associate Professor Marianne Legault. (See Female Intimacies in Seventeenth-Century French Literature)
Tumblr media
Sphinx by Anne F. Garréta, translated by Emma Ramadan
Taking its name from the song by Amanda Lear, this genderless novel charts the relationship between a disillusioned theology student who becomes enamored in the Paris club scene, through extraordinary circumstances discovering a love in DJing and for a cabaret dancer from Harlem.
Tumblr media
Thérèse and Isabelle by Violette Leduc, translated by Sophie Lewis
Taking decades to appear in an uncensored form this steamy tale of a tryst between schoolgirls, from another well-known 20th century French writer, was also adapted to film.
Tumblr media
Three by Valérie Perrin, translated by Hildegarde Serle
Inspired in part by another reflective novel Lie with Me, a lengthy tome of three childhood friends over decades and the haunting disappearance of an 18-year-old girl they knew.
Tumblr media
We Are the Birds of the Coming Storm by Lola Lafon, translated by David and Nicole Ball
A truly melodic piece of feminist literary fiction as it keenly weaves three women’s experiences along with a deteriorating political back drop.
Tumblr media
Over the Millennia of French Literature Reading Challenge
A year worth of reading taking a #FrenchLitTimeTravel through French writing from before the 10th  century to the 21st.
Tumblr media
  Francophone Writers From 50+ Lands
Coincidentally marking 50 years of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie in 2020, this challenge with hashtag #Francophone50 highlights the depth of writing in French from around the world.
1 note · View note
morebedsidebooks · 11 months
Text
The Fortunes of Wangrin by Amadou Hampaté Bâ
Tumblr media
In this world of ours, however, bright days are followed by somber nights. And so it happened that great sorrow spread throughout the land. All the same, a particular event does sometimes bear different consequences for different people.
  Malian writer Amadou Hampaté Bâ in 1973 crafted The Fortunes of Wangrin from oral traditions. A biography of an African man called Wangrin and his machinations in the colonial French civil service and as a businessman gaining influence becoming a folk hero conning the rich to give to the poor. Albeit while still recruiting the latter for his own means and extensively lining his own pockets before a reversal of fortunes. Amadou Hampaté Bâ’s own forward and afterword giving context perhaps puts the answer to the question of who was Wangrin best: “A complex of contradictions”. The book artful in its entertaining storytelling is perhaps though most important for the experienced eye of the author on colonialism and traditional African cultures. As such the English edition translated by Aina Pavolini Taylor includes copious footnotes in the back. Useful also is the introduction by academic Abiola Irele. Yet it is too bad recognition of The Fortunes of Wangrin these days appears more relegated to college curriculum or global literature reading initiatives. As an award-winning classic African Francophone book, just the same neither could I pass it over for my own Francophone Writers from 50+ Lands project.
  The Fortunes of Wangrin by Amadou Hampaté Bâ is available in English, translated by Aina Pavolini Taylor, in print from Indiana University Press
0 notes
morebedsidebooks · 1 year
Text
2023 Reading Challenges
Tumblr media
This year I'm close to the finishing line for my Francophone Writers From 50+ Lands project I started in 2020.
Tumblr media
I always seem to have backlist books too, so again Beat the Backlist challenge by Austine Decker works well.
Tumblr media
And for something new, the Pick Your Poison Reading Challenge over at Gregory Road has a variety of categories and topics therein to fit reading goals small to large.
Happy reading to all!
1 note · View note
morebedsidebooks · 3 years
Text
Kuessipan by Naomi Fontaine
Tumblr media
« Celui qui était beau ; celle qui prie pour mieux qu'on se sente ; celui qui fabriquait des tambours en peau de caribou, de ses mains vieillies par le sapinage et les chemins à bâtir ; celle qui nous nourrissait de pain frais sur lequel le beurre fondait et de macaronis longs aux tomates et au bacon ; celui qui a migré vers la nouvelle réserve lorsque d'autres refusaient ; celui qui fumait ; celle qui était là à mon gala, à ma graduation, aux premiers jours de mon enfant ; celle qui a vécu le XXe siècle sans jamais parler un seul mot français, mais qui dans notre langue avait toujours trouvé le mot juste pour nommer telle modernité ou telle menace à sa liberté ; celui qui a vu naître tous ses enfants sous les tentes ; celui qui n'a jamais vendu sa terre ; ceux qui autrefois ont arpenté le pays, d'un océan à l'autre, pour ne jamais rester au même endroit ; et ceux que nous sommes devenus. »
 “He who was beautiful. She who prayed that others might feel better. He who made drums from caribou hide, with his hands rough from stripping pine boughs and building roads. She who fed us freshly baked bread with melted butter and spaghetti with tomato and bacon sauce. He who moved to the new reserve when others refused. He who smoked; she who was at my prom, my graduation, during my child’s first days. She who lived through the twentieth century without ever speaking a word in French but, in our language, always found the right word to name every modern thing and threat to her freedom. He whose children, all of them, were born in tents. He who never sold off his land. Those who once travelled the country, from ocean to ocean, never staying in the same place—and the people we have become since.”
Meaning “your move” or “your turn” In the Innu language, Kuessipan by Naomi Fontaine is a bestselling poetic book showcasing the interconnected beauty and severity of landscapes, people, history and culture of an Innu community in northeastern Quebec.
These profound fragments of verse making up the prominent Francophone writer and teacher’s slender debut 2011 novel came about as she says “it’s my turn to talk, my turn for my people and I to talk about our community.” In English Kuessipan debuted in 2013 translator David Homel taking on the task. And Homel once again lending talents for Fontaine’s pieces included when British literary journal Granta published its 2017 fall issue #141 Canada, and also in 2018 the hardcover anthology The Good Lands: Canada Through the Eyes of its Artists both marking the 150th anniversary of Confederation. Notable years as well for filming on a live-action film of Kuessipan from director Myriam Verreault.
Fontaine a co-writer with the movie elaborating from its source material, focusing more narratively on an intricate coming-of-age story. Successfully at that, the picture has picked up awards and nominations in Canada and at various film festivals. Audience interest too propelling the it into the top 10 in the box office in in Quebec with the fall release of 2019, eclipsing other promoted US films.
Manikanetish, her second novel from 2013, about an Innu teacher is further set for English release soon in 2021 translated by Luise von Flotow. Fontaine is not just saying something but, reaching many audiences.
Little wonder when describing her work beautiful doesn’t exactly seem a word quite good enough. Kuessipan is one of those titles I’ve purchased in French and English because there is a spirit to the writing that has me coming back time and again.  
  Kuessipan by Naomi Fontaine is available translated in English by David Homel, in print and digital from Arsenal Pulp Press
Also watch a trailer for the 2019 film Kuessipan here
9 notes · View notes
morebedsidebooks · 3 years
Text
2020-2021 Women in Translation Roundup Part 1: Francophone
Again, books from French are what I was most reading in the last year. This list with links to my reviews represents works of women creators from several lands and book categories. Children’s, short stories, novel length fiction, and poetry writing in the francophone world is vast and deep. I also included a couple of poets I’d like to see gain more global recognition.
Tumblr media
  The Magic Doll by The Magic Doll by Adrienne Yabouza and illustrated by Élodie Nouhen
A gorgeous children’s book with French illustrator Élodie Nouhen inspired by an Akua’ba fertility doll, The Magic Doll also showcases the talent of author Adrienne Yabouza’s who has written books in a number of categories. (FYI Originally from the Central African Republic, Yabouza also has a translated English edition of her novel Co-wives, Co-widows set to come out in November 2021, ISBN#9781912868773.)
Tumblr media
  The Transparent Girl and Other Stories by S. Corinna Bille
20 short stories from 20th century Swiss writer S. Corinna Bille are found in The Transparent Girl and Other Stories, two which have also been made into live-action films.
Tumblr media
  Just Fine by France Daigle
The first novel in a trilogy following the lives of various residents of a town on the Petitcodiac River in New Brunswick, Canada Just Fine by Acadian author France Daigle is a novel that may resonate with readers more these days.
Fauna by Christiane Vadnais
Quebecois author Christiane Vadnais with Fauna delivers 10 interconnected eco-fiction vignettes with a real strain of horror.
Tumblr media
  Island of Shattered Dreams by Chantal T. Spitz
The first novel by an Indigenous author in Tahiti, Island of Shattered Dreams from Chantal T. Spitz writes an epic beginning with creation stories, recollection of European arrival and then characters across three generations from world war, up through nuclear testing.
The Wreck by Déwé Gorodé
The first Kanak novel from New Caledonia, The Wreck by Déwé Gorodé, a prominent activist, politician and writer winds together culture, tradition, folklore, colonization, modernization, politics and the generations in this stunning tale.
Tumblr media
  Dance on the Volcano by Marie Vieux-Chauvet
Haitian writer Marie Vieux-Chauvet’s epic historical fiction novel Dance on the Volcano about two mixed-race sisters who rise through many barriers in the carefully stratified pre-revolutionary society of Saint-Domingue to become theatre stars.
I, Tituba Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Condé
A historical fiction novel by Guadeloupean writer Maryse Condé about Tituba, the enslaved woman who would be among the first accused in the Salem Witch Trials.
Tumblr media
  Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga
The first fiction novel by Scholastique Mukasonga, Our Lady of the Nile is based on her time attending a prestigious school in Rwanda before she was forced to flee the country, events a prelude to the 1994 genocide. The story also now adapted to a live-action film.
Silence of The Chagos by Shenaz Patel
Mauritian writer Shenaz Patel as a journalist faced with the story of Chagossians exiled to the country, wrote award-winning and memorable novel Silence of The Chagos after befriending refugees and activists.  
Tumblr media
  The Galloping Hour French Poems of Alejandra Pizarnik
A French/English bilingual collection taking its name, The Galloping Hour, from a line in one of the French poems of esteemed Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik.
Tumblr media
  The Other Half of History: An Anthology of Francophone African Women’s Poetry
A bilingual French/English poetry book features 29 writers across 13 lands in Francophone Africa.
Shaïda Zarumey
Poet Shaïda Zarumey has had some of her evocative poetry translated to English in the anthologies Women Writing Africa: West Africa and the Sahel, and A Rain of Words.
Tumblr media
  Magie Faure-Vidot (Vijay-Kumar)
From the Seychelles Magie Faure-Vidot is a powerful poet who writes in English, French and Seychellois Creole.
Tumblr media
Passion de la pensée by Salma Khalil Alio
A collection of poetry by Chadian writer Salma Khalil Alio , Passion de la pensée is only one example of her body of work that I wish would be translated to English.
3 notes · View notes
morebedsidebooks · 3 years
Text
Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga
Tumblr media Tumblr media
“Modesta,” said Gloriosa, “have you ever taken a good look at the Virgin’s face?”
“Which one?”
“Our Lady of the Nile, the statue.”
“Yes, and? Sure, it’s not like the other Marys. It’s black. The whites put black makeup on her. Probably to please us Rwandans, but her son in the chapel, well, he remained white.”
“But did you notice her nose? It’s a straight little nose, a Tutsi nose.”
“They took a white Virgin, painted her black, and kept that white nose.”
“Yes, but now she’s black, it’s a Tutsi nose.”
“You know, back then, whites and missionaries were on the Tutsi side. So a black Virgin with a Tutsi nose was a good thing for them.”
“Yes, but I don’t want a Holy Virgin with a Tutsi nose. I no longer want to pray before a statue with a Tutsi nose.”
“What can you do! You think Mother Superior or Monsignor would really change the statue if you asked them to? Unless you talk to your dad …”
“Of course I’ll talk to my dad … In fact, he said they plan to de-Tutsify schools and government. It’s already started in Kigali and at Butare University. You and me, we’ll begin by de-Tutsifying the Holy Virgin. I’m going to correct her nose, and there’ll be some girls who’ll understand the warning.”
“You want to break the statue’s nose! When they find out it’s you who did it, you’ll probably get expelled.”
“Don’t be so sure, I’ll explain to everyone why I had to do it: it’s a political gesture, so they’ll more likely congratulate me, and then there’s my dad …”
“So, how are you going to do it?”
“It’s not difficult: we smash the statue’s nose and stick a new nose on. We’ll go to the Batwa one Sunday, there are some in Kanazi. We’ll get some clay, nicely prepared and mixed, the kind they make pots with, and we’ll mold Mary a new nose.”
“And when will you stick this new nose on?”
“We’ll go at night, the day before the pilgrimage, so the next morning everyone will see Our Lady of the Nile with a new nose. A true Rwandan’s nose, the nose of the majority people. Everyone will appreciate it. Even Mother Superior. No need to explain it to her. Or rather yes, I’ll explain it to them. I know a few who’ll lower their heads, trying to hide their small noses. You’ll be first, Modesta, with your mother’s nose. But you’ll help me because you’re my friend.”
“I’m scared, Gloriosa. You’ll still get into trouble, and I certainly will too if I help you.”
“No, you won’t, we’re militants, I’m telling you. What we’re going to do is a militant act, and what with my dad, nobody will dare say a thing. They’ll be obliged to change the statue and replace it with another one, a real Rwandan lady with a majority nose. You’ll see, the Party will congratulate us. We’ll be women politicians. One day we���ll become ministers.”
“You definitely, but me, I doubt it.”
  Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga is a novel I meant to post about previously when it more recently received a film adaptation. But as another year passes and April 7th comes again, which is the International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, now is as good a time as any.
First published in 2012 and set in 1973 this story of Rwandan school girls at an elite Catholic school perched in the mountains exists both decades before and after that mass atrocity. Nonetheless a book which illustrates part of how the country got there. Much older tensions and divisions, and for a newly formed republic the seeds and continuing effects of Belgium colonisation and Christianisation. Coup d’état, violence, predation, additionally regulations and expulsions on an ethnic basis in areas of public influence and schools a prelude. Hindsight may be 20/20, but the writing was on the wall literally.  Along with plenty of Tutsi and Hutu blood in the region.
As well, a story that is undoubtedly a personal and therapeutic work for the author. Born in 1956 Scholastique Mukasonga faced the continued persecutions against Tutsis, displaced from her home village as a child. Writing previous autobiographical works on her mother and this, tombs and memorials of sorts. Our Lady of the Nile marked her first fiction novel, a method allowing distance to express the themes and her memories. Mukasonga had the chance to pursue education attending a prestigious school similar to her creation in the book alongside daughters of the country’s politicians. The character of Virginia essentially herself. As a teenager eventually forced to flee the country entirely, and decades later too losing most of her immediate family and a number of other relatives in the 1994 genocide. So Mukasonga turned to writing, powerful writing earning accolades. Besides the Prix Renaudot and Prix Ahmadou-Kourouma for Our Lady of the Nile, the novel given further visibility under her consultation with the aforementioned 2019 film adaptation.
Tumblr media
A very beautiful piece of cinematography at that, directed by Atiq Rahimi. An Afghan filmmaker and award-winning writer who likewise fled his country during conflict and has made use of the outlet of art, finding refuge in France, later learning his brother who stayed in Afghanistan was murdered. Able to visit Rwanda in 2017 Rahimi the next year during filming capturing a breathtaking country as much a presence and force as the girls and the feminine ideals at play too in the process. Exploring the mechanisms of violence in a path from innocence, the sacred, prohibition, to sacrilege and sacrifice. Storytelling as well speaking to acknowledgement and the importance of not living in denial. (Though taking the role was a source of fear and anxiety for at least one of the actresses’ family.) A film featuring novice actresses nor casting specific percentages of Tutsi and Hutu, simply reflecting the youth of Rwanda. Rwandan girls, not even alive when such atrocity occurred, aware through family narratives and educated in the history. Rwanda remembers. The world remembers.
 Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga, is available in English translated by Melanie Mauthner, in print and digital (including audio) by Archipelago Books
View the trailer for the film with English subtitles
6 notes · View notes
morebedsidebooks · 3 years
Text
Suzanne Dracius
Suzanne Dracius with her lyrical words spanning poetry, plays and prose novels is one of the most versatile and enchanting authors. Of mixed heritage born in Martinique, raised in Paris, and making her home back again, along with an academic career as a professor of classical literature, she has won numerous awards for her writing. Anglophone readers are blessed with three examples by Dracius in translation, representing different forms and periods which might suit one’s preference.
Tumblr media
  Her first prose novel The Dancing Other, originally published in French in 1989 and translated to English by Nancy Naomi Carlson & Catherine Maigret Kellogg, is a tragic tale of its protagonist Rehvana caught between the societies of mainland France and the Caribbean, while her older sister attains stability, agency and connection. For Matildana:
 And yet, she dances.
              She dances just like in the beginning, back in the days of clandestine evening gatherings on former plantations, when behind the béké’s back, and in defiance of the whip, slaves used to give in to the nocturnal fever of kalendas, and the unbridled undulations— part of lascivious, part warlike— of the once-forbidden rhythms.
Tumblr media
  Though the older sister is left with her own quest as well, links and revelations in store. The short story collection Climb to the Sky, originally published in French in 2003 and translated to English by Jamie Davis, includes a continuation to The Dancing Other entitled ‘Sister Soul’.
 In fact, Matildana never stopped asking herself questions. Refusing with vehemence all delirium that would make her feel guilty, she wanted bitterly to understand. Even if life gave vigor and joy back to her, even if, in their whirling, her days enveloped her in sweetness, the anesthetic for happy times big and small, from one sun to another sun, offering her peace, love, what do I know? Matildana would not stop wanting to have understood.
Tumblr media
  And Dracius’ first poetry collection originally published in 2009, Calazaza’s Delicious Dereliction, translated ever delicately by Nancy Naomi Carlson and presented in French, Creole and English, echoes in parts the same ground. Dracius wrote against discriminatory attitudes with the pejorative filled poem ‘Nègzagonale’, also referencing the famed Aimé Césaire, English excerpt below.
She landed, windswept
At Lamentin Airport
At the end of the dawn
You called her “chabine calazaza,”
Newly arrived from the Other Shore.
Mam’selle was born over there,
With a chocolate complexion
Sweetened by honey and milk.
 Nègzagonale
Euroblack
Listen a little, listen to learn.
Listen, stop playing the fool!
Let me tell you: it makes no difference to us,
Cute little chassis with rhythmic curves,
Face cocoa-flour from France
Born the devil of a long way from anywhere, department 93,
She only knows her mother was West Indian,
She’s never heard a word of Creole.
Sarcelles was where she went to school.
  Dracius has little limit it seems with language(s). Like a composer choosing anything form the most basic to extravagant, common to unusual, casual to proper, ancient to new, and all many bits of various tongues sprinkled about. She thankfully further often provides context to others of many different backgrounds who approach her work. No wonder ‘multiplicity’ is a word which comes up often when discussing such an author. Each of these titles exquisitely exemplifies this by facing headstrong into issues of dislocation, identity and searching for place and purpose while blending time and place together so that the past, present, future also are all too alive. Dracius challenges— in content, in language, self and perspective.
  The Dancing Other is available in English translated by Nancy Naomi Carlson & Catherine Maigret Kellogg, in print and digital from Seagull Books
Climb to the Sky is available in English translated by Jamie Davis, in print and digital from University of Virginia Press
Calazaza’s Delicious Dereliction is available translated by Nancy Naomi Carlson, in print from Tupelo Press
1 note · View note