Maryse Condé

Maison Jean Vilar courtyard
What a wonderful talk.

Hey, I just did a quick read on her.
It's in French, and for those of you who are willing, you'll be able to navigate through some of this. www.wordreference.com can also be helpful.

The information below is taken directly from:
Lepasteur, Gladys. Maryse Condé. Reseau France Outremer (2005). 17 Jul 2007. http://guadeloupe.rfo.fr/article9.html http://guadeloupe.rfo.fr/article9.html

L’expérience africaine

Lorsqu’elle décide de « comprendre sa négritude », elle se lance dans la quête de ses origines, dans les traces de Marcus Garvey qui prône le retour à la terre des ancêtres.

Le temps des désillusions
Une fois sur place, pour elle, le choc est grand : étrangère sur le continent noir, elle réalise qu’Antillais et Africains ne forment pas un même peuple qui serait seulement divisé par l’esclavage.

Pour elle, la race n’est pas le facteur essentiel et seule la Culture devient primordiale.

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Arriving with Mary (my floor mate) in the courtyard, we found our spot in the shade.
Maryse Condé was born on February 11, 1937 in Guadeloupe. She went to Paris at age 16 to work on her degree in literature at La Sorbonne. She is a prolific writer. I've read Ségou (an épic), and Crossing the Mangrove (which is my favorite thus far). Her play, "Comme deux frères" is being performed here during the festival. I won't get to see it because it coincides with our NEH session. Plays show as early at 9am here. This one is at 11 am and my sessions run from 9:30 to 12:00 noon.
She's lived in Guadeloupe, France, Africa and the USA. She has taught at Columbia and numerous other universities and colleges in North America.

Here are some of Mme. Condé's comments:

When asked how she came to write for theater she replied:
"Being a militant and a Marxist--I'm not afraid to say I was Marxist. I know many people are denying that they were or not admiting to it, but I was--Being a Marxist, the only acceptable form a literature was writing theater. All other forms were considered bourgeois or inaccessible to the working class. Theater could speak to the working class, speak to their lives and their experience.

"When I had more confidence in myself, I began to write novels. I found greater (self) expression in the novel. I stopped writing theater because I felt that I could not express myself in the language of the people in Guadeloupe. I expressed myself in French, and the people I was trying to reach spoke Creole."

Today she writes to give sound to words. "Les mots on un sens, mais ils ont un son aussi. Je veux entendre les sons de mes mots."

Condé spoke of her transformation as a writer. When the interview kept quoting her works or words from the 1980s, she said, "I have evolved. I don't think the same way I thought 20 years ago. Then, I used to write to teach something. Now I write for myself, to express my feelings, and my experience." Ultimately, Mme Condé felt that the writer thinks of themselves first. "I think about what hurts. I write from my pain. Je pense à mes deboires. "--Her disappointments fuel her writing.

Many years ago, in her days as a Marxist, she thought that Guadeloupe would achieve political independence. They've now been absorbed by Europe and receive European funds. She didn't sound pleased with this. She finds the independence, the liberty she seeks through her writing--at least that's what she tells herself in consolation.

I would have like to have been there from beginning to end, but I had a pressing engagement at Chateaublanc outside the city to see one of the final presentations of Insideout by Sasha Waltz. It was one of the IN shows of the festival, and I had to catch a bus to get there. But those 30 minutes in the courtyard of La Maison Jean Vilar were scintillating!

Merci Mme Condé.