Crossover Texts/Creole Tongues: A Conversation with Maryse Condé
Born in 1937 in Guadeloupe’s Pointe-à-Pitre, Maryse Condé stands as one of the premier Caribbean writers on the global scene, sharing space with a distinguished cohort that includes Derek Walcott, Caryl Phillips, Daniel Maximin, Frankétienne, Edouard Glissant, Patrick Chamoiseau, Raphaël Confiant, Jean Bernabé, and Edwidge Danticat. After obtaining university degrees in Paris and London, Condé began a multifaceted career in literature, journalism, criticism, and education. Before taking up her current position at Columbia University as professor of French and Francophone literature, Condé taught in Guinée, Ghana, Senegal, the University of Paris III, the University of Virginia, and the University of California at Berkeley.
Condé’s compelling first novel Hérémakhonon (loosely translated as either “Welcome house” or “Awaiting good times”) draws on her early experiences in West Africa. Published in 1976, the novel has a startlingly contemporary bite, opening with an acerbic deflation of the “Africa chic” sweeping Europe and the United States in the form of a tiermondisme that flattens cultural nuance in its cloying identification with the Other: “Honestly! You’d think I’m going because it is the in thing to do. Africa is very much the thing to do lately. Europeans and a good many others are writing volumes on the subject. Arts and crafts centers are opening all over the Left Bank. Blondes are dying their lips with henna and running to the open market on the rue Mouffetard for their peppers and okra.”1
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Notes
- Condé, Hérémakhonon [Welcome house or Awaiting good times], trans. Richard Philcox (Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1982), 3. Originally published as Condé, Hérémakhonon (Paris: Union Générale, 1976). This and subsequent references are to the English edition.