Guadeloupean, French-language author
Maryse Conde
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![Maryse Condé in 2008](//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a6/Maryse_Cond%C3%A9.jpg/220px-Maryse_Cond%C3%A9.jpg) Maryse Conde in 2008
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Born
| Maryse Boucolon
(
1937-02-11
)
February 11, 1937
(age 87)
Pointe-a-Pitre
,
Guadeloupe
,
France
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Language
| French
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Nationality
| French
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Education
| Lycee Fenelon , Sorbonne Nouvelle
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Alma mater
| Sorbonne Nouvelle
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Notable works
| Segou
(1984)
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Notable awards
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Spouse
| Mamadou Conde
[1]
Richard Philcox
[2]
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Maryse Conde
(nee
Boucolon
; February 11, 1937) is a French novelist, critic, and playwright from the
French
Overseas
department
and
region
of
Guadeloupe
. Conde is best known for her novel
Segou
(1984?85).
[3]
Her novels explore the African diaspora that resulted from slavery and colonialism in the Caribbean.
[4]
Her novels, written in French, have been translated into English, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese.
[5]
She has won various awards, such as the Grand Prix Litteraire de la Femme (1986),
[4]
Prix de l’Academie francaise
(1988),
[4]
Prix Carbet de la Carraibe
(1997)
[6]
and the
New Academy Prize in Literature
(2018) for her works.
[4]
Early life
Born as Maryse Boucolon at
Pointe-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe
, she was the youngest of eight children. In an interview entitled "I Have Made Peace With My Island" Maryse Conde recounts aspects of her early life.
[7]
Conde describes her parents as among the first black instructors in Guadeloupe. Conde's mother, Jeanne Quidal directed her own school for girls. Conde's father, Auguste Boucolon previously an educator, founded the small bank "Le Caisse Cooperative des prets" which was later renamed as "La Banque Antillaise."
[7]
Conde's father, Auguste Boucolon had two sons from his first marriage, Serge and Albert.
[7]
Conde's three sisters are named Ena, Jeanne and Gillette.
[7]
Her four brothers are named Auguste, Jean, Rene, and Guy.
[7]
Conde's birth 11 years after Guy, made her the youngest of the eight children.
[7]
Conde was born while her mother was 43, and her father was 63.
[7]
Conde's describes herself as "the spoiled child", which she attributes to her parents older age, and the age-gap between her and her siblings.
[7]
Conde began writing at an early age. Before she was 12 years old she had written a one-act, one-person play.
[7]
The play was written as a gift for her mother Jeanne Quidal's birthday.
[7]
After having graduated from high school, she attended
Lycee Fenelon
from 1953 to 1955.
[7]
Conde was expelled after two years of attendance.
[7]
Conde instead furthered her studies at the
Universite de Paris III
(
Sorbonne Nouvelle
) in Paris.
[7]
During her attendance, she along with other West Indians, established the
Luis-Carlos Prestes
club.
[7]
Life
In 1959, Conde attended a rehearsal of
Les Negres/The Blacks
by
Jean Genet
, where she would meet the
Guinean
actor Mamadou Conde.
[7]
In August 1959 she married Mamadou Conde.
[7]
They eventually had four children together. By November 1959 the couple's relationship became strained, and Conde moved to the
Ivory Coast
, where she would teach for a year.
[7]
During Conde's returns for the holidays she became politically conscious through a group of
Marxist
friends.
[7]
Conde's Marxist friends would influence her to move to
Ghana
.
[7]
Between the years 1960 and 1972 she taught in
Guinea
,
Ghana
(from where she was deported in the 1960s because of politics), and
Senegal
.
[5]
In 1973 she returned to Paris, and taught Francophone literature at
Paris VII (Jussieu)
,
X (Nanterre)
, and
Ill (Sorbonne Nouvelle)
.
[5]
In 1975, she completed her M.A. and Ph.D. at the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris in comparative literature, examining black stereotypes in Caribbean literature.
[4]
[5]
In 1981, she and Conde divorced, having long been separated. The following year she married Richard Philcox, the English-language translator of most of her novels.
She did not publish her first novel,
Heremakhonon
until she was nearly 40 because "[she] didn't have confidence in [herself] and did not dare present [her] writing to the outside world."
[8]
However, Conde would not reach her current prominence as a contemporary Caribbean writer until the publication of her third novel,
Segou
(1984).
[5]
Following the success of
Segou
, in 1985 Conde was awarded a
Fulbright scholarship
to teach in the US. She became a professor of French and Francophone literature at
Columbia University
in New York City in 1995.
[4]
Conde has taught at various universities, including the
University of California, Berkeley
;
UCLA
, the
Sorbonne
, the
University of Virginia
, and the
University of Nanterre
. She retired from teaching in 2005.
[5]
Literary significance
Conde's novels explore racial, gender and cultural issues in a variety of historical eras and locales, including the
Salem witch trials
in
I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem
(1986); the 19th-century
Bambara Empire
of
Mali
in
Segou
(1984–1985); and the 20th-century building of the Panama Canal and its influence on increasing the West Indian middle class in
Tree of Life
(1987). Her novels trace the relationships between African peoples and the diaspora, especially the Caribbean.
[4]
Her first novel,
Heremakhonon
, was published in 1976.
[5]
It was so controversial that it was pulled from the shelves after six months because of its criticism over the success of
African socialism
.
[9]
While the story closely parallels Conde's own life during her first stay in Guinea, and is written as a first-person narrative, she stresses that it is not an autobiography.
[10]
The book is the story, as she described it, of an "'anti-moi', an ambiguous persona whose search for identity and origins is characterized by a rebellious form of sexual libertinage".
[10]
She has kept considerable distance from most Caribbean literary movements, such as
Negritude
and
Creolite
, and has often focused on topics with strong feminist and political concerns. A radical activist in her work as well as in her personal life, Conde has admitted: "I could not write anything... unless it has a certain political significance. I have nothing else to offer that remains important."
[4]
Conde's later writings have become increasingly autobiographical, such as
Tales From the Heart: True Stories From My Childhood
(1999) and
Victoire
(2006), a fictional biography of her maternal grandmother in which she explores themes of motherhood, femininity, race relations, and the family dynamic in the postcolonial Caribbean.
Who Slashed Celanire's Throat
(2000) shows traces of Conde's paternal great-grandmother.
However, her 1995 novel
Windward Heights
is a reworking of
Emily Bronte
’s
Wuthering Heights
,
which she had first read at the age of 14. Conde had long wanted to create a work around it, as an act of "homage." Her novel is set in Guadeloupe, and race and culture are featured as issues that divide people.
[4]
Reflecting on how she drew from her Caribbean background in writing this book, she said:
"To be part of so many worlds?part of the African world because of the African slaves, part of the European world because of the European education?is a kind of double entendre. You can use that in your own way and give sentences another meaning. I was so pleased when I was doing that work, because it was a game, a kind of perverse but joyful game."
[4]
Maryse Conde's literary archive (Maryse Conde Papers) are held at
Columbia University Libraries
.
Selected bibliography
Novels
- Heremakhonon
(1976).
Heremakhonon
, trans. Richard Philcox (1982).
- Une saison a Rihata
(1981).
A Season in Rihata
, trans. Richard Philcox (1988).
- Segou : les murailles de terre
(1984).
Segu
, trans. Barbara Bray (1987).
- Segou : la terre en miettes
(1985).
The Children of Segu
, trans. Linda Coverdale (1989).
- Moi, Tituba, sorciere… Noire de Salem
(1986).
I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem
, trans. Richard Philcox (1992).
- La Vie scelerate
(1987).
Tree of Life
, trans. Victoria Reiter (1992).
- Traversee de la mangrove
(1989).
Crossing the Mangrove
, trans. Richard Philcox (1995).
- Les Derniers rois mages
(1992).
The Last of the African Kings
, trans. Richard Philcox (1997).
- La Colonie du nouveau monde
(1993).
- La Migration des coeurs
(1995).
Windward Heights
, trans. Richard Philcox (1998).
- Desirada
(1997).
Desirada
, trans. Richard Philcox (2000).
- Celanire cou-coupe
(2000).
Who Slashed Celanire's Throat?
, trans. Richard Philcox (2004).
- La Belle creole
(2001).
The Belle Creole
, trans. Nicole Simek (2020).
- Historie de la femme cannibale
(2003).
The Story of the Cannibal Woman
, trans. Richard Philcox (2007).
- Les Belles tenebreuses
(2008).
- En attendant la montee des eaux
(2010).
Waiting for the Waters to Rise
, trans. Richard Philcox (2021).
- Le Fabuleux et triste destin d’Ivan et d’Ivana
(2017).
The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana
, trans. Richard Philcox (2020).
Plays
- An tan revolisyon
, published in 1991, first performed in Guadeloupe in 1989
- Comedie d'Amour
, first performed in Guadeloupe in 1993
- Dieu nous l'a donne
, published in 1972, first performed in Paris in 1973
- La Mort d'Oluwemi d'Ajumako
, published in 1973, first performed in 1974 in
Gabon
- Le Morne de Massabielle
, first version staged in 1974 in Puteaux (France), later staged in English in New York as
The Hills of Massabielle
(1991)
- Pension les Alizes
, published in 1988, first staged in Guadeloupe and subsequently staged in New York as
Tropical Breeze Hotel
(1995)
- Les Sept voyages de Ti Noel
(written in collaboration with Jose Jernidier), first performed in Guadeloupe in 1987
- Comme deux freres
(2007).
Like Two Brothers.
Other
- Entretiens avec Maryse Conde
(1993).
Conversations with Maryse Conde
(1996). Interviews with Francoise Pfaff. English translation includes a new chapter based on a 1994 interview.
- Le coeur a rire et a pleurer : souvenirs de mon enfance
(1999).
Tales From the Heart: True Stories From My Childhood
, trans. Richard Philcox (2001).
- Victoire, les saveurs et les mots
(2006).
Victoire: My Mother's Mother
, trans. Richard Philcox (2006).
- La Vie sans fards
(2012).
What Is Africa to Me? Fragments of a True-to-Life Autobiography
, trans. Richard Philcox (2017).
- The Journey of a Caribbean Writer
(2013). Collection of essays, translated by Richard Philcox.
- Mets et merveilles
(2015).
Of Morsels and Marvels
, trans. Richard Philcox (2015).
Awards and honours
See also
References
- ^
"Maryse CONDE"
, Aflit, University of Western Australia/French.
- ^
"Author Profile: Maryse Conde"
,
World Literature Today
, Vol. 78, No. 3/4 (September?December 2004), p. 27, via JSTOR.
- ^
Conde, Maryse, and Richard Philcox.
Tales from the Heart: True Stories from My Childhood.
New York: Soho, 2001.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
k
Rebecca Wolff, Interview:
"Maryse Conde"
Archived
November 1, 2016, at the
Wayback Machine
,
Bomb Magazine,
Vol. 68, Summer 1999. Retrieved April 27, 2016.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
"Maryse Conde | Columbia | French"
.
french.columbia.edu
. Retrieved
March 16,
2019
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
"Author Profile: Maryse Conde"
.
World Literature Today
(September?December 2004), 78 (3/4), p. 27.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
k
l
m
n
o
p
q
r
s
Clark, VeVe A.; Cecile Daheny (1989). "
"I Have Made Peace With My Island": An Interview with Maryse Conde".
Callaloo
(38): 87?133.
doi
:
10.2307/2931145
.
ISSN
0161-2492
.
JSTOR
2931145
.
- ^
Quinn, Annalisa (October 12, 2018).
"Maryse Conde Wins an Alternative to the Literature Nobel in a Scandal-Plagued Year"
.
The New York Times
.
ISSN
0362-4331
. Retrieved
March 16,
2019
.
- ^
a
b
Conde, Maryse (February 6, 2019).
"Giving Voice to Guadeloupe"
.
The New York Review of Books
. Retrieved
March 16,
2019
.
- ^
a
b
Lionnet, F. (1989).
"Happiness Deferred: Maryse Conde's
Heremakhonon
and the Failure of Enunciation"
. In
Autobiographical Voices: Race, Gender, Self-Portraiture
(pp. 167?190). Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press.
External links
- Finding aid to Maryse Conde papers at Columbia University
. Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
- French Guadeloupe writer Maryse Conde reading from her work in the Recording Laboratory
, Sept. 24, 1999 (Library of Congress)
- Works by Maryse Conde
at
Open Library
- Template:Worldcat id
- Mekkawi, Mohamed.
Maryse Conde: Novelist, Playwright, Critic, Teacher: An Introductory Biobibliography
. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Libraries, 1990.
- Perisic, Alexandra.
Precarious Crossings: Immigration,
Neoliberalism
, and the Atlantic
(on Maryse Conde, Roberto Bolano, Giannina Braschi, Caryl Phillips), 2019.
- Petri Liukkonen.
"Maryse Conde"
.
Books and Writers
.
- Artist Page from the University of Minnesota
- Presentation du Fonds Maryse Conde de la Mediatheque Caraibe (lameca), ouvrages issus de la bibliotheque privee de Maryse Conde
- webGuinee - Maryse Conde
- Maryse Conde recorded for the Archive of Literature from the Hispanic Division at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.D.
, on September 24, 1999.
- Four Caribbean Women Playwrights: Ina Cesaire, Maryse Conde, Gerty Dambury and Suzanne Dracius
by Vanessa Lee (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)
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