A new translation that gives thanks to the intense style of one of the crucial figures of African-American literature.
Maman & moi & maman is the seventh volume of an autobiographical cycle initiated in 1969 with I know why sings the bird in cage. He is also the latest book by Maya Angelou, who died in May 2014 at 86.
His first sentences are a whole program. “How, born black in a country of white people, poor in a society where wealth is venerated and sought after at all costs, woman in an environment where only large ships and some locomotives are designated favorably by the use of the female pronoun, how did I become Maya Angelou? I often wanted to quote Topsy, the black girl in Uncle Tom’s box. I was tempted to say: ‘Don’t know. I pushed, that’s all! ‘”
Fortunately, that’s not all, because Maya Angelou devoted her life to telling her a thousand lives, writer, poet, activist, who raised her to the firmament of African-American literature. Maman… is his self -portrait, and in echo, the portrait of his mother, Vivian Baxter, a woman “Phenomenal”, a “mother-sister-friend” According to the expression of black American women, who continuously encouraged him in her choices, his commitments and her galleys.
His parents who “Were like matches and gasoline”, Her rape at 7 years old she summarizes, lapidary: “I was raped, and the rapist was killed.” Her existence as a single mother in the Dèche, in turn receiving tram, cook, waitress in a night club, dancer, singer and even prostitute at the request of a pimp lover.
The great style of Maya Angelou, the one who gives him wings, is his liberated style, his absence of pathos and sentimentality, his humor of self and others, his crazy love of jazz and everything that makes life swing.
Maman & moi & maman by Maya Angelou (Les Éditions Noir sur Blanc/“Notabilia”), translated from English (United States) by Claire Chabalier, 223 p., 22 €. In bookstores on May 8.
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