What do Jean de La Fontaine have in common with the Cheyenne warriors of the Great Plains of the American West in the 19th century? Jim Fergus, naturally. The Franco-American writer, visiting Livr’à Vannes this weekend, is coming to present his fable, “The True World”, where the narrator is none other than Molly McGill, wife of Hawk, a Cheyenne. She is one of these “A Thousand White Women” that he imagined in his eponymous trilogy with inexhaustible success, in France, for 24 years, on the basis of a historical fact: in 1854, the Cheyenne chief Little Wolf asked – without success – to the American government to give him 1,000 white women, “to show us how to live in a world without bison”. In “The Real World”, one of these thousand imaginary women, the skeptic Molly McGill finds herself in a “paradise” where the Cheyennes are transformed into animals, the dead return under the influence of a storm, and where the earth , finally, overcomes evil.
Jim Fergus, why did you choose to write a fable?
Many tribes of the Great Plains believed that there was a real world beyond this one, and that it was possible to go there with a good guide. This is what happened to Molly and Hawk. But I realized that a paradise, a utopia without conflict, was too boring! It was Sabine, my editor, who suggested I write it in the form of a fable. I started rereading La Fontaine and Aesop. But I hesitated at first, because until then, being a journalist, I had always started my novels with historical facts. There I was a little intimidated to create a fable. I introduce a little conflict, and bad guys, but no one is killed, thanks to the land and the animals. The moral is that Molly, the cynic, accepts that she is in this real world.
Where does this passion for Cheyenne culture come from?
It’s a tribe that I discovered when I was 8 or 9 years old, while taking a road trip to the western plains with my father. I had already seen John Ford’s westerns and thought that Native Americans still lived freely in the wilderness. We started on a Cheyenne reservation in Montana. Most Americans crossed quickly and didn’t even stop for gas. We stopped in a village and took a little walk. My father wanted me to see this. I was shocked by the poverty, the alcoholism, the memory stayed with me.
You speak about a culture that is not yours, through the voice of female characters… Is your legitimacy as a writer sometimes called into question?
Yes, more and more. Critics from the younger generation who tell me that I’m an old white guy, and therefore I don’t have the right to write that. I have also received criticism from producers in Hollywood (at one time interested in an adaptation, Editor’s note) who tell me that the title “A Thousand White Women” is sexist and racist. Yet these are exactly the words used by Little Wolf. I did research, I wrote a book, where is their book? I think Native Americans have every right to accuse me of cultural appropriation. But I was very careful to speak in the voice of a white woman.
Practical
Salon Livr’ in Vannes until Sunday May 26, on the Simone-Veil port esplanade and at the Carmes auditorium: Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Sunday from 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Free admission. More information on www.livreavannes.fr
