As migrants embark on perilous journeys across oceans and deserts in pursuit of sanctuary and improved living conditions, what is the responsibility of those safely ensconced in the nations they seek to enter? Moved by repeated tragedies among immigrants attempting to enter eastern and southern Europe, Patrick Chamoiseau assails the hypocrisy and detachment that allow these events to happen.
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Space is limited. Please RSVP at (212) 998-IAAA (4222)
Note that you can also enter via the Kimmel Center at 60 Washington Square South, corner of LaGuardia Place, which is the building behind the Global Center.
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“If justice had a Jericho trumpet, Chamoiseau would be it.” — Junot Díaz
Patrick Chamoiseau was born in Fort-de-France, Martinique where he currently resides. He writes stories, novels, essays, plays, poems and scripts, often translated into several languages. Also known for his work in the créolité movement, his writing makes him one of the most influential voices and leading writers in the Caribbean. After he studied law in Paris, Chamoiseau returned to Martinique inspired by Édouard Glissant to take a close interest in Creole culture. Chamoiseau is the author of a historical work on the Antilles under the reign of Napoléon Bonaparte and several non-fiction books which include Éloge de la créolité (In Praise of Creoleness), co-authored with Jean Bernabé and Raphaël Confiant. His second novel, Solibo Gorgeous (1988), develops the themes of the search for a Martinican identity by the cultural practices of the past. Texaco (1992), awarded the Prix Goncourt, is an epic that tells the suffering of three generations, first under slavery, then during the first migration to Enville, finally to the present time. Texaco was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. It has been described as “a masterpiece, the work of a genius, a novel that deserves to be known as much as Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth and Cesaire’s Return to My Native Land.” His most current book is Migrant Brothers: A Poet’s Declaration of Human Dignity (2018), a powerful call to recognize immigrants as kin.
J. Michael Dash, born in Trinidad, has worked extensively on Haitian literature and French Caribbean writers, especially Édouard Glissant, whose works, The Ripening(1985), Caribbean Discourse (1989) and Monsieur Toussaint (2005) he has translated into English. After 21 years at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica where he was Professor of Francophone Literature and Chair of Modern Languages, he is now Professor of French at New York University after having been Director of the Africana Studies Program. His publications include Literature and Ideology in Haiti (1981), Haiti and the United States (1988), Edouard Glissant (1995), The Other America: Caribbean Literature in a New World Context (1998).
In English. Any French will be translated to English.
Sponsored by the NYU Institute of African American Affairs, with participation of La Maison Française