Dr. Lewis' Book: Race, Culture, and Identity Question and Answer

Questions and Answers with Shireen Lewis on her Newly Released Book, Race, Culture, and Identity: Francophone West African and Caribbean Literature and Theory from Négritude to Créolité
Q. What is Race, Culture, and Identity about?
A. I would like to start by saying that we don't often hear about the writers I deal with in this book and this is a pity because they are so significant. This book is about the evolution of black consciousness by French-speaking or "Francophone" writers like the Senegalese Léopold Senghor (who was also the President of Senegal), Aimé Césaire (the distinguished poet and politician of Martinique), Jean Paul Sartre (the Existentialist and Marxist), the young, talented contemporary Patrick Chamoiseau of Martinique (who won a prestigious award in France for his novel, Texaco) and of course, Paulette Nardal -- a woman in a league of her own.
Q. Talk to us about these writers and the connection with the Harlem Renaissance.
A. The evolution of black consciousness in this book begins in the 1930s and ends in the late 20th century. In the 1930s, black French speaking writers from West Africa and the Caribbean were living and studying in Paris. The impetus for their awakening to black consciousness or "Négritude" was in large part because of the influence of black American writers of the Harlem Renaissance such as Langston Hughes and Claude McKay. These black writers in Paris were reading Hughes, McKay and others and they were also socializing with them in Paulette Nardal's literary salon in Paris. They were mesmerized by Harlem Renaissance writers' proclamation of the arrival of the "New Negro" who was unafraid to express his black-skinned self and by their recognition of African culture as the source of black identity.
Q. How does the Caribbean fit into this?
A. Okay, let me shift gears a little and talk about Caribbeaness or "Antillanité" which follows Negritude. The context for this questioning of self and the search for black consciousness is slavery and colonization and specifically France's involvement in West Africa and the Caribbean. In the 1960's, Martinican writer, Edouard Glissant, begins the turn away from looking at Africa as the source of black consciousness or black identity and he begins to talk about Caribbeaness or "Antillanité." This is now the turn toward the diaspora -- the turn toward the New World -- the new world that slavery and colonization created. And here are some of the questions once we start to talk about diaspora, and these are universal questions: How do people in the diaspora define home -- is it the home of one's ancestors farthest back in time? Is home where we come from or is it where we are at? And what is our identity now that we are in this new space? These questions touch not only on slavery and the Holocaust, but also on the current debate about immigration. It is a question the French government had to confront last year and earlier this year after the riots in the suburbs and elsewhere by young, disenfranchised Arabs and Africans forced to live in the ghettoes in France. How does one gain or regain Arab or black consciousness after living in the diaspora for a long time or having experienced nothing but the diaspora? And when I talk about the diaspora I'm talking about groups of people living outside their "mother country" or country of origin whose ancestors were brought to the new country by force or violence or where they or their parents are immigrants, refugees or exiles. I call it a sort of diaspora dilemma that affects a whole lot of people -- white, black, Arab, Latino, etc.
Q. You talk about dark skinned black people in this book. What about them? How does skin color play into this?
A. Yes, this book also brings up the question about dark-skinned people. How does color play into all this? Well, that's the last part of the evolution of black consciousness that I deal with in my book -- this whole question of Creole -- of Creoleness -- of Créolité, of Creole language and culture. Writers like Patrick Chamoiseau talk about the people of the Caribbean as multicultural, multiracial, and multireligious. But indeed this Creole movement is fundamentally about the recognition for the first time of the validity of Creole language and culture, and therefore, a validation of those poor and rural and dark-skinned people in the French speaking Caribbean who speak almost exclusively Creole. This is in large part a recognition of who they are and this is indeed very empowering for them.
Q. Talk to us about Paulette Nardal, the black woman intellectual and feminist.
A. One of the most significant contributions of this book is the chapter on Paulette Nardal. This book is in part a tribute to her. It is a long overdue recognition of this black Martinican woman who was an intellectual in her own right and very much a feminist. She was clear about the inequities women faced because of their gender. Here for the first time is a full biography of Nardal's life and work including her contribution to the birth of modern French speaking literature. Paulette Nardal has not been recognized enough for her contribution to the birth of black consciousness in the 1930s nor for her contribution to women and families in Martinique after the Second World War. She lived in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. She was fluent in English with a Master's degree in English from the Sorbonne in Paris. She introduced French-speaking African and Caribbean writers to Harlem Renaissance writers through her review which published excerpts in French and English of works by Harlem Renaissance writers. She also had a literary salon in Paris where African and Caribbean writers -met black American writers. Almost all her writing in the 1930s was on or about women including an article on Augusta Savage, the black American sculptress. Nardal also urged women to exercise their right to vote after she returned to Martinique to live permanently after the Second World War. These were major contributions from a woman who was right of center, but very much a strong feminist.