#condéchallenge recap in January
In 2021, my reading challenge is to explore Maryse Condé's bibliography. This is why I’ve decided to take up the #condéchallenge. My monthly reading program is on my personal Instagram (@ladyinsaeng). In January, I read two of her “books”: her 1979 literature dissertation and her novel A Season in Rihata.
Stereotype of the black man in West Indian literature
Her dissertation is available for free online. Each page made me reflect on my own writing. At the same time, this is the purpose of a dissertation, I know. But what struck me the most is that all the representation issues she addresses are still relevant to Guadeloupean literature today: how to tell the story and, above all, for whom do you write? This debate concerns all kind of literature from colonized countries, but it’s fascinating to me that the English-speaking countries of the Caribbean have been developing a literature where characters exist outside of the white gaze for decades. I re-re-read “In Praise of Creoleness” after reading Maryse Condé's dissertation... Some phrasing, some examples in this essay by Jean Barnabé, Patrick Chamoiseau and Raphaël Confiant seem to be an answer to the issues Maryse Condé talks about... And they disagree with it. But hey, I'm still trying to understand “In Praise of Creoleness”, so I'm not going to venture into that discussion. For me, whether one writes in Creole or in French is really secondary. The first question the author needs to answer is how and why your story gives value to your culture and the people who live it. How do you honour them? For me, this is what Maryse Condé demonstrates in her dissertation.
A season in Rihata
In Rihata, a small sleepy backwater town in a fictitious African state, a couple and their family struggle to come to terms with each other against a background of political maneuvering and upheaval. Marie Helene, far from her native home in Guadeloupe, lives unhappily with her African husband, Zek. Their uneasy existence is further disturbed by the arrival of Zek's brother Madou, now Minister for Rural Development, on an official visit to Rihata. Murky events from the past resurface and send ripples through their lives. This portrait of an African community torn between progress and tradition and subject to the whims of a dictatorship unfolds through a subtle web of personal relationships. A Season in Rihata is a novel of political power, exile, grief, and loneliness.
I have always heard “Ségou” cited as an example to evoke the books of Maryse Condé taking place in Africa, but I’m saving it for the end of the challenge (unless a charitable soul buys it from me in paper version by then). I can't say that I liked “A Season in Rihata” in the sense that I didn't close the book by telling myself "life is beautiful, the world is not that dark". It's a dramatic story, a tangle of people who aren’t pursuing their true desires. They’re stuck in a life they hate. As a soap opera fan, I loved the revelations of family secrets, the unrequited love stories, the representation of a dysfunctional family, the Caribbean-Africa relationship in the 70s and 80s.
Voici mon programme de février
Any recommendations about Maryse Condé’s works?