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Research Topics > Caribbean Literature
INTERVIEW WITH MARYSE CONDE
 KEIDRA MORRIS/SYDNEY REECE:
What are you working on
currently and what message(s) are you trying to convey to your audience through this work?
MARYSE CONDE: Currently, I am working on a novel for my
granddaughter. She is seventeen and she doesn’t read. I am writing something that
will be attractive to her and motivate her into thinking of race and origin. I want
something where la forme will attract her. Her generation isn’t
interested in books. So I’m hoping to find something that will bring her to the
story, a story of someone like her. Caribbean writers are so serious. There’s no
joking or irony. I want it to be something comic, but…
K/S: In terms of class, gender and/or nation, who do you
think your audience is?
MC: Normally, I write for my community (i.e. Guadeloupe) but
they don’t read. I write for them, but my largest readership comes from Europe.
People of Europe are my audience. However, this does not change the way that I write.
 K/S: What, if anything, do you think gets lost in the
translation?
MC: I don’t really care about the translation. It makes
the ideas available to other people, but I don’t care about the translation. The
translator is producing another work. Richard, (Madame Condé’s husband) does most of
the translation and produces another work that is not entirely mine. Many of my
books have been translated. Tituba and Three/Tree of Life were
translated into Japanese. In that book the story began at the back , my name was at the
end…and…it is simply another form, another energy, one that I couldn’t very
well relate to. But it was nice nonetheless.
K/S: Do you think that an Afro-American writer such as Toni
Morrison, Ernest Gaines or Alice Walker could accurately and poignantly write about
aspects of the Caribbean experience? Could they be accurate in telling a story about
Caribbean culture?
MC: Why not? It’s their job as writers . . . . . Fiction
is not based on accuracy. It’s more interpretation or dreaming that a writer does.
And why not? Accuracy is not their job as writers. The work of the novelist is not to
"study" but to dream and write about what is seen, not to do history or
anthropology.
K/S: Who is the real Caribbean woman? What is her story? Has
it been told?
 MC: I am just as the woman working in
the cane fields. There are many stories about so many different women. The story is
different for me than it is for my mother, my sister living in Africa, my daughters,
or my granddaughters.
K/S: What would the independence of Guadeloupe mean in terms
of identity?
MC: Going to any port with the French identity is a lie, and
I’m fed up with being "French." When I am in France, am I considered
French? The only time my passport becomes French is when I travel to the United States or
some other country that recognizes the French passport, but in France? In Guadeloupe? What
does it mean to carry the French passport. This is an hypocrisy. Another thing that this
brings is the notion that with the French passport we are better than other Antilles.
We should stop thinking we are superior to Dominicans. Guadeloupians don’t
even know what to call themselves. If we were independent, then we would, at least know
that.
K/S: If Guadeloupe were independent, what economic/political
system would you follow? Is there one already in place?
MC: Communism, Marxism is quite unimportant, but to answer
your question something of this nature would have to be put in place, we aren’t ready
for capitalism at this point. We need to revolutionize what we produce which is
sugar, rum, bananas. There is a strike going on right now, a dockers’ strike, and
right now there is no milk, nor onions on this island. Part of the colonial pact is that
Guadeloupians don’t grow these things themselves. These are things we need to change.
K/S: What place or importance does French Caribbean
literature occupy in discussions of the post-colonial, if any, especially given the
precarious relationships which exist between islands such as Guadeloupe and Martinique in
relation to France? What do you think of being tagged a "post-colonial"
writer?
MC: It doesn’t bother me at all. After the colonial
approach, we are now trying to break a set of models and canons. We stopped using the
colonial framework last century, and we are trying to do something very different. I
don’t object at all. Guadeloupe is still a colony, but the writer is free from the
colonial frame of mind to write.
K/S: What do you think of us [Blacks in America]?
MC: I could never get into the African American community.
They are biased and the doors are shut.
K/S: What do you mean?
MC: In terms of their narrow-mindedness. When talking to
them, there is a constant desire to measure themselves by white people’s standards.
At Columbia, we have formed a Caribbean Association. The African-American department
doesn’t pay any attention to us. They have built an image of Africa, not as it is,
but as they want it to be. If you present something different, they think you are
denigrating the continent. I know Africa. My first husband was African, my daughters are
half-African and I’ve lived there for over fifteen years. You, Black Americans, show
you are African by outward appearance instead of living it.
K/S: How do you live it?
MC: African Americans think that Africa is something you wear
on the outside, the color of your skin, the texture of your hair, this ridiculous thing
they call "Kente" cloth. Africa is in here. In your heart, but more than that
it’s in one’s soul, the foundation of the self. It is something in my heart. No
one can measure it, but I know it is there. Blacks in America are still so afraid of
whiteness. Also, in terms of language, it is thought that a black person shouldn’t
have a French accent. African Americans do the same categorical minimizing that they
accuse white people of doing—for those of us in the Caribbean Association two of us
speak Spanish, one French, the other Portuguese. When there is a rally or demonstration of
Nationalism/Pan-Africanism to be performed, they (the African Americans) do not call us.
As if the only real slaves were those who spoke English. It’s ridiculous.
K/S: Where is home for you?
MC: Home is Guadeloupe, Montebello specifically. I was born
in Sarcen. I’ve never regarded France as home. I love Paris, but my home is a small
island, here in Petit Bourg.
K/S: What is the significant difference between Martinique
and Guadeloupe? In what one considers in terms of mentality or identity?
MC: We have a basic understanding despite colonial
differences. The majority of studies regarding these differences are done in the
Caribbean. In other words, to the rest of the world there is no distinction made between
us. But physically I don’t know what significant difference there is between us. We
are not American, nor African. Some think we don’t have anything to offer except
beaches. We have communality. I would not say Martinique and Guadeloupe don't like
each other, but contention does exist. Continent (the largest hypermarket on the
island of Guadeloupe) is owned by a Martinican, a Beke to be exact. There is a
battle between the economies, but communalities exists in food, music, creole language
– these are greater than any other differences we may have.
Excerpts taken from interview with Maryse Condé on September,
1998 in Petit Bourg, Guadeloupe by Keidra T. Morris and Sydney Reece.
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