École de la misère

Yvan Alagbé

FRMK, book is in French

I remember that we haven't read a new book by Yvan Alagbé for a long time. I even remember a young lady who gave thanks when she heard the news. I remember that the first pages of School of Misery date from 1997 but that everything goes back even further. I remember a certain idea of France and the benefits of colonization. I remember the sans-papiers at the Saint-Bernard church. I remember the noise and the smells. I remember poor France. I remember rich France. I remember the landscapes, lake, forest, undergrowth… I remember the warmth of the bodies, open, offered bodies, I remember the blood beating and flowing. I also remember the inert and cold bodies. I remember the "Our Father" as if it were yesterday. However, I don't remember everything. However, there are many things I would like to forget. But who can forget what is written in the flesh? And who would want to forget the miserable splendor of the newborn child? School of Misery begins quietly. Claire's memories are embedded like dreams, evoking images and sensations, before one of them clears a clear place and finally lets out a dialogue between father and daughter: "So How come we've never seen your boyfriend? Is he a nigger or what? ". This dialogue, very close to the one found at the beginning of the book Nègres Jaunes, recalls the same protagonists. School of Misery remembers Nègres Jaunes. And in the same way, Claire, with the distance and the years, reconstructs her story with regard to that, broader and more terrible, of her family, whom she finds on the occasion of the funeral of her grandparents. . In response to the silence, politeness and hypocrisy of the ceremonial, she remembers. A labyrinthine path through his memory opens doors to scenes of incest, crooked legacies, photos from the time of the colonies and violent disputes that come to bite and illuminate a passionate love. to each violence its history, to each misery its school.