Martinique (France) / All works
Novel
I Am a Martinican Woman
Je suis Martiniquaise
Mayotte Capécia · 1948
Synopsis
Mayotte, the narrator, tells of her childhood at Le Carbet, a village in Martinique, and of her difficult relations with her parents, then of her departure for Fort-de-France after her father's remarriage. Now a young woman, she ends up running her own laundry there. She lives with André, a French officer posted on the island at the time of the Vichy regime, by whom she has a son.
Context
The novel came out from Corrêa in 1948 under a band that announced: “For the first time, a woman of colour tells her life.” In 1949 it received the Grand prix littéraire des Antilles. In 1952 Frantz Fanon condemned it in Peau noire, masques blancs, for what he read in it of a black woman's desire for a white man. Critics have reread it since: Myriam Cottias and Madeleine Dobie reissued it in 2012 with the author's second novel. Beatrice Stith Clark's English translation appeared in 1997.
Who it is for
For reading the Martinique of the interwar years as seen by a woman of the people, and a book that long divided the critics.
Prizes and reception
Awarded a prize in the Antilles the year after its publication, then harshly judged by Fanon; reissued in 2012 in a critical edition.
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