Maryse Condé

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Maryse Condé
Condé after her talk at Montclair State University (New Jersey) on 6 November 2006
Condé after her talk at Montclair State University (New Jersey) on 6 November 2006
BornMarise Liliane Appoline Boucolon
(1934-02-11)11 February 1934
Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, France
Died2 April 2024(2024-04-02) (aged 90)
Apt, Vaucluse, France
LanguageFrench
NationalityFrench
EducationLycée Fénelon , Sorbonne Nouvelle
Alma materSorbonne Nouvelle
Notable worksSégou (1984)
Notable awards
SpouseMamadou Condé[1]
Richard Philcox[2]

Maryse Condé (née Marise Liliane Appoline Boucolon[3]; 11 February 1934 – 2 April 2024) was a French novelist, critic, and playwright from the French Overseas department and region of Guadeloupe. Condé is best known for her novel Ségou (1984–1985).[4]

Condé's novels explore the African diaspora that resulted from slavery and colonialism in the Caribbean.[5] Her novels, written in French, have been translated into English, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese.[6] She won various awards, such as the Grand Prix Littéraire de la Femme (1986),[5] Prix de l’Académie française (1988),[5] Prix Carbet de la Caraïbe (1997)[7] and the New Academy Prize in Literature (2018) for her works.[5] She was considered a strong contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature.[8]

Early life[edit]

Born in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, she was the youngest of eight children. Her parents were among the first black instructors in Guadeloupe. Her mother, Jeanne Quidal, directed her own school for girls. Her father, Auguste Boucolon — previously an educator - founded the small bank "La Caisse Coopérative des prêts", which was later renamed "La Banque Antillaise."[9]

Condé's father, Auguste Boucolon, had two sons from his first marriage: Serge and Albert. Condé's three sisters were Ena, Jeanne, and Gillette, and her brothers were Auguste, Jean, René, and Guy.[9] Condé was born 11 years after Guy, when her mother was 43, and her father 63. Condé described herself as "the spoiled child", which she attributed to her parents' older age, as well as the age-gap between her and her siblings.[9]

Condé began writing at an early age. Before she was 12 years old, she had written a one-act, one-person play. The play was written as a gift for her mother's birthday.[9]

After having graduated from high school, she attended Lycée Fénelon from 1953 to 1955. Condé was expelled after two years of attendance. Condé furthered her studies at the Université de Paris III (Sorbonne Nouvelle) in Paris. During her attendance, she, along with other West Indians, established the Luis-Carlos Prestes club.[9]

Career[edit]

In 1958, Condé attended a rehearsal of Les Nègres/The Blacks by Jean Genet, where she would meet the Guinean actor Mamadou Condé.[9] In August 1958, she married Mamadou Condé.[9] They eventually had four children together (before separating in 1969). By November 1959, the couple's relationship had already become strained, and Condé moved to the Ivory Coast, where she would teach for a year.[9]

During Condé's returns for the holidays, she became politically conscious through a group of Marxist friends.[9] Condé's Marxist friends would influence her to move to Ghana.[9]

Between the years 1960 and 1972, she taught in Guinea, Ghana (from where she was deported in the 1960s because of politics), and Senegal.[6] While in Ghana, she edited a collection of francophone African literature, Anthologie de la literature africaine d'expression française (Ghana Institute of Languages, 1966).[10]

After leaving Ghana, she worked in London as a BBC producer for two years.[11] Then in 1973, she returned to Paris and taught Francophone literature at Paris VII (Jussieu), X (Nanterre), and Ill (Sorbonne Nouvelle).[6] 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.[5][6] She was the author of works of criticism that included Le profil d’une oeuvre (Hatier, 1978), La Civilisation du Bossale (L'Harmattan, 1978), and La Parole des femmes (L'Harmattan, 1979).[10]

In 1981, she and Condé divorced, having long been separated. The following year, she married Richard Philcox, an Englishman and the English-language translator of most of her novels.[12]

She did not publish her first novel, Hérémakhonon, until she was nearly 40, as "[she] didn't have confidence in [herself] and did not dare present [her] writing to the outside world."[13] Her second novel, Une saison à Rihata, was published in 1981; however, Condé would not reach prominence as a contemporary Caribbean writer until the publication of her third novel, Ségou (1984).[6]

Following the success of Ségou, in 1985, Condé was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to teach in the United States. She was included in the 1992 anthology Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.[14] In 1995, she became a professor of French and Francophone literature at Columbia University in New York City,[5] where she was subsequently professor emerita.[15]

Condé 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.[6]

Death[edit]

Condé died in Apt, Vaucluse, on 2 April 2024, at the age of 90.[16][17]

Literary significance[edit]

Condé'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 Ségou (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.[5]

Her first novel, Hérémakhonon, was published in 1976.[6] It was so controversial that it was pulled from the shelves after six months because of its criticism over the success of African socialism.[18] While the story closely parallels Condé's own life during her first stay in Guinea, and is written as a first-person narrative, she stressed that it is not an autobiography.[19] 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".[19]

Condé kept considerable distance from most Caribbean literary movements, such as Négritude and Creolité, and often focused on topics with strong feminist and political concerns. A radical activist in her work as well as in her personal life, Condé admitted: "I could not write anything... unless it has a certain political significance. I have nothing else to offer that remains important."[5]

Condé's later writings became 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 Condé's paternal great-grandmother.

However, her 1995 novel Windward Heights is a reworking of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, which she had first read at the age of 14. Condé 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.[5] 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."[5]

In 2018, she was awarded the New Academy Prize in Literature, established in 2018 as an alternative to the Nobel Prize in Literature (for which she was often considered a favourite but which was not awarded that year, as a consequence of a sexual abuse scandal among the award committee),[20] with the jury praising Condé as a "grand storyteller whose authorship belongs to world literature, describing the ravages of colonialism and the postcolonial chaos in a language which is both precise and overwhelming."[21]

In 2022, she was honoured as one of 12 Royal Society of Literature International Writers, alongside Anne Carson, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Cornelia Funke, Mary Gaitskill, Faïza Guène, Saidiya Hartman, Kim Hyesoon, Yōko Ogawa, Raja Shehadeh, Juan Gabriel Vásquez and Samar Yazbek.[22][23]

Condé's 2023 novel The Gospel According to the New World was longlisted for the International Booker Prize and, at the age of 86, she was the oldest writer ever to be longlisted for the prize.[24] The creation of the novel was by means of dictation to her husband and translator Richard Philcox, as she had a degenerative neurological disorder that made it difficult to speak and see.[25] Together, they were the first wife-and-husband author-translator team to be longlisted, and subsequently shortlisted,[26] for the award.[24][27][28]

Archives[edit]

Maryse Condé's literary archive (Maryse Condé Papers) are held at Columbia University Libraries.

Selected bibliography[edit]

Novels

Original publication English publication
Title Year Title Translator Year Publisher
Hérémakhonon 1976 Heremakhonon Richard Philcox 1982 Three Continents Press
Une saison à Rihata 1981 A Season in Rihata 1988 Heinemann
Ségou: les murailles de terre
(lit: "Segu: The Earthen Wall") 		1984 Segu Barbara Bray 1987 Viking Press
1988 Ballantine Books
1998 Penguin Books
Ségou: la terre en miettes
(lit: "Segu: The Earth in Pieces") 		1985 The Children of Segu Linda Coverdale 1989 Viking Press
1990 Ballantine Books
Moi, Tituba, Sorcière…Noire de Salem 1986 I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem Richard Philcox 1992,
2009 		University of Virginia Press
1994 Ballantine Books
La Vie scélérate
(lit: "The Wicked Life") 		1987 Tree of Life: A Novel of the Caribbean Victoria Reiter 1992 Ballantine Books
Traversée de la mangrove 1989 Crossing the Mangrove Richard Philcox 1995 Anchor Books
Les Derniers rois mages
(lit: "The Last Magi") 		1992 The Last of the African Kings 1997 University of Nebraska Press
La Colonie du nouveau monde
(lit: "The New World Colony") 		1993 — — — —
La Migration des cœurs
(lit: "The Migration of Hearts") 		1995 Windward Heights Richard Philcox 1998 Soho Press
Desirada 1997 Desirada 2000 Soho Press
Célanire cou-coupé
(lit: "Slashed-Throat Célanire") 		2000 Who Slashed Celanire's Throat? 2004 Atria Publishing Group
La Belle créole
(lit: "The Beautiful Créole") 		2001 The Belle Créole Nicole Simek 2020 University of Virginia Press
Historie de la femme cannibale 2003 The Story of the Cannibal Woman Richard Philcox 2007 Atria Publishing Group
2008 Washington Square Press
Les Belles ténébreuses
(lit: "The Dark Beauties") 		2008 — — — —
En attendant la montée des eaux 2010 Waiting for the Waters to Rise Richard Philcox 2021 World Editions
Le Fabuleux et triste destin d'Ivan et d'Ivana 2017 The Wondrous and Tragic Life
of Ivan and Ivana 		2020 World Editions
L'Évangile du nouveau monde 2021 The Gospel According to the New World 2023 World Editions

Plays

  • An tan revolisyon, published in 1991, first performed in Guadeloupe in 1989
  • Comédie d'Amour, first performed in Guadeloupe in 1993
  • Dieu nous l'a donné, published in 1972, first performed in Paris in 1973
  • La Mort d'Oluwémi 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 Alizés, published in 1988, first staged in Guadeloupe and subsequently staged in New York as Tropical Breeze Hotel (1995)
  • Les Sept voyages de Ti-Noël (written in collaboration with José Jernidier), first performed in Guadeloupe in 1987
  • Comme deux frères (2007). Like Two Brothers.

Other

  • Entretiens avec Maryse Condé (1993). Conversations with Maryse Condé (1996). Interviews with Françoise Pfaff. English translation includes a new chapter based on a 1994 interview.
  • Le cœur à rire et à 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[edit]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Maryse CONDE" Archived 26 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine, Aflit, University of Western Australia/French.
  2. ^ "Author Profile: Maryse Condé" Archived 22 November 2019 at the Wayback Machine, World Literature Today, Vol. 78, No. 3/4 (September–December 2004), p. 27, via JSTOR.
  3. ^ "Maryse Condé, femme de lettres guadeloupéenne, est morte à l'âge de 90 ans". Archived from the original on 2 April 2024. Retrieved 2 April 2024.
  4. ^ Condé, Maryse, and Richard Philcox. Tales from the Heart: True Stories from My Childhood. New York: Soho, 2001.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Rebecca Wolff, Interview: "Maryse Condé". Archived 1 November 2016 at the Wayback Machine, Bomb Magazine, Vol. 68, Summer 1999. Retrieved 27 April 2016.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g "Maryse Condé | Columbia | French". french.columbia.edu. Archived from the original on 20 June 2017. Retrieved 16 March 2019.
  7. ^ a b c d e "Author Profile: Maryse Condé" Archived 19 February 2022 at the Wayback Machine. World Literature Today (September–December 2004), 78 (3/4), p. 27.
  8. ^ Shepherd, Alex (3 October 2022). "Who Will Win the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature?". The New Republic. Archived from the original on 27 March 2023. Retrieved 1 April 2023.
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Clark, VèVè A.; Cecile Daheny (1989). ""I Have Made Peace With My Island": An Interview with Maryse Condé". Callaloo (38): 87–133. doi:10.2307/2931145. ISSN 0161-2492. JSTOR 2931145.
  10. ^ a b "Maryse Condé". Voices from the Gaps. University of Minnesots. Retrieved 3 April 2024.
  11. ^ Cain, Sian (2 April 2024). "Maryse Condé, Guadeloupean 'grand storyteller' dies aged 90". The Guardian.
  12. ^ "Conversing on Paper: Richard Philcox on the Living Art of Translation - Asymptote Blog". Retrieved 4 April 2024.
  13. ^ Quinn, Annalisa (12 October 2018). "Maryse Condé Wins an Alternative to the Literature Nobel in a Scandal-Plagued Year". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 4 February 2021. Retrieved 16 March 2019.
  14. ^ Busby, Margaret (ed.). "Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent from the Ancient Egyptian to the Present". LibraryThing.
  15. ^ Sethi, Anita (4 July 2020). "InterviewM | aryse Condé: 'An English author can reach the heart of a Caribbean child'". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 24 May 2023. Retrieved 24 May 2023.
  16. ^ "Mort de Maryse Condé, grande dame de la littérature et de la pensée anticoloniale - L'Humanité". humanite.fr (in French). 3 September 2021. Retrieved 2 April 2024.
  17. ^ Marivat, Gladys (2 April 2024). "L'écrivaine guadeloupéenne Maryse Condé est morte". Le Monde.fr (in French). Retrieved 2 April 2024.
  18. ^ a b Condé, Maryse (6 February 2019). "Giving Voice to Guadeloupe". The New York Review of Books. Archived from the original on 6 February 2019. Retrieved 16 March 2019.
  19. ^ a b Lionnet, F. (1989). "Happiness Deferred: Maryse Condé's Heremakhonon and the Failure of Enunciation" Archived 21 June 2022 at the Wayback Machine. In Autobiographical Voices: Race, Gender, Self-Portraiture (pp. 167–190). Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press.
  20. ^ Risen, Clay (2 April 2024). "Maryse Condé, 'Grande Dame' of Francophone Literature, Dies at 90". The New York Times.
  21. ^ "Maryse Condé accepted The New Academy Prize in Literature of SEK 320 000 in Stockholm" (Press release). The New Academy Press Release. 9 December 2018. Retrieved 2 April 2024.
  22. ^ Brown, Lauren (30 November 2022). "Carson, Gaitskill and more welcomed onto RSL International Writers Programme". The Bookseller. Retrieved 3 April 2024.
  23. ^ Wild, Stephi (30 November 2022). "Twelve Writers Appointed in the Second Year of the RSL International Writers Programme". Broadway World. Retrieved 3 April 2024.
  24. ^ a b Shaffi, Sarah (14 March 2023). "International Booker prize announces longlist to celebrate 'ambition and panache'". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 14 March 2023. Retrieved 14 March 2023.
  25. ^ Italie, Hillel (2 April 2014). "Maryse Condé, prolific 'grande dame' of Caribbean literature, dead at age 90". The Independent.
  26. ^ "See who's on the 2023 International Booker Prize shortlist". Southbank Centre. 18 April 2023. Archived from the original on 24 May 2023. Retrieved 24 May 2023.
  27. ^ "Maryse Condé". thebookerprizes.com. 11 February 1934. Archived from the original on 14 March 2023. Retrieved 14 March 2023.
  28. ^ Self, John (22 May 2023). "The 2023 International Booker prize shortlist – review". The Observer. Archived from the original on 24 May 2023. Retrieved 24 May 2023.
  29. ^ Carruggi, Noëlle (2010). Maryse Condé: rébellion et transgressions (in French). KARTHALA Editions. p. 17. ISBN 978-2-8111-0362-0.
  30. ^ "Mort de Maryse Condé, plusieurs vies de combat - L'Humanité". L'Humanité (in French). 2 April 2024. Retrieved 3 April 2024.
  31. ^ "Guadeloupe's Maryse Condé remembered as a fearless explorer of the complexities of Caribbean history and identity". Global Voices. 3 April 2024. Retrieved 3 April 2024.
  32. ^ Forsdick, Charles; Murphy, David (1 April 2022). Postcolonial Thought in the French Speaking World. Liverpool University Press. p. 43. ISBN 978-1-80207-934-0.
  33. ^ "Maryse Condé, prolific Guadeloupean writer, dies aged 90". Le Monde. 2 April 2024. Retrieved 3 April 2024.
  34. ^ Associated Press (1 November 2005). "Writers Conde, De Veaux Win Hurston/Wright Prizes". Washington Post.
  35. ^ "Maryse Condé : mort d'une autrice à l'oeuvre humaniste et universelle | TV5MONDE - Informations". information.tv5monde.com (in French). 2 April 2024. Retrieved 3 April 2024.
  36. ^ "La semaine (du 14 au 20 avril)". Jeune Afrique. 23 April 2007.
  37. ^ "Maryse Condé, Grand prix du roman métis". Bibliobs (in French). 15 December 2010. Retrieved 3 April 2024.
  38. ^ "Nineteen PEN Translates awards go to titles from fifteen countries and thirteen languages". English PEN. 10 June 2020. Archived from the original on 29 August 2020. Retrieved 24 May 2023.
  39. ^ Carpenter, Caroline (10 June 2020). "South Sudan title among PEN Translates award-winners". The Bookseller. Archived from the original on 24 May 2023. Retrieved 24 May 2023.
  40. ^ "L'écrivaine guadeloupéenne Maryse Condé reçoit le prix de la Fondation Cino del Duca pour son oeuvre "portée sur l'humanisme"". Outre-mer la 1ère (in French). 3 June 2021. Retrieved 3 April 2024.
  41. ^ "PEN Translates awards announced". English PEN. 21 December 2021. Archived from the original on 5 June 2023. Retrieved 24 May 2023.
  42. ^ Shaffi, Sarah (30 November 2022). "Tsitsi Dangarembga, Anne Carson and Mary Gaitskill honoured by Royal Society of Literature". The Guardian.
  43. ^ "RSL International Writers". Royal Society of Literature. 3 September 2023. Archived from the original on 20 January 2024. Retrieved 3 December 2023.

External links[edit]

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