The Restless

by Gerty Dambury, Judith G. Miller (Translator)

Overview

Structured like a Creole quadrille, this lyrical novel is a rich ethnography bearing witness to police violence in French Guadeloupe. Narrators both living and dead recount the racial and class stratification that led to a protest-turned-massacre. While Dambury’s English debut is a memorial to a largely forgotten atrocity, it is also a celebration of the vibrancy and resilience of Guadeloupeans.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781558614468
Publisher:	Feminist Press at CUNY, The
Publication date:	01/09/2018
Pages:	220
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Gerty Dambury is a theater director, novelist, and poet from Guadeloupe. She won the Prix Carbet de la Caraïbe et Tout-Monde in 2015 for her play Le Rêve de William Alexander Brown. This is her first work to be translated into English.

Judith G. Miller is currently serving as Dean of Arts and Humanities at NYU-Abu Dhabi, where she has helped build eight major programs and establish an Arts Center. She is a specialist of French and Francophone theatre, text and production, and her latest publications have included translations and editions: Mother Folly: A (Psychoanalytical) Tale by Françoise Davoine (Stanford 2013) and In and Out of Africa: The Theatre of Koffi Kwahulé (Michigan 2015). Her current research concerns African Francophone theatre, particularly the history of production and performance of key texts (with translations) from the 1970s to the present. She is the author of numerous articles and books on French and Francophone theatre and women writers and directors, notably a study of the visionary founder of le Théâtre du Soleil, Ariane Mnouchkine (Routledge 2007), and has translated plays by Hélène Cixous, Ina Césaire, Olivier Kemeid, Koffi Kwahulé, Werewere Liking, and several others. The French government has recognized for her work in theatre and French education with several awards and election to les Palmes Académiques.

Editorial Reviews

12/18/2017
Set in 1960s French-governed Guadeloupe, Dambury’s incisive debut addresses the political and racial unrest that violently comes to a head on May 26, 1967. Nine-year-old Émilienne is waiting for her Papa to come home—she has many questions for him, the most urgent being: why did her schoolteacher disappear? Over the course of three days, Émilienne struggles to accept that her beloved teacher has been taken away and is likely to not return. Her father, meanwhile, has not yet returned home. The people of Guadeloupe have been swept up in the turmoil that began on the 24th in the capital, Pointe-à-Pitre, with workers protesting wages, and reached a boiling point two days later when police began shooting at the protesters. Ghosts—including a neighbor who died two years earlier and an uncle—relay these events to Émilienne as she waits at her house, providing historical context as well as their own personal stories. In the book’s prologue, Dambury notes that the number of casualties during the unrest was totaled at five until 2016, when official documents were declassified that showed more than 100 people were seriously wounded or killed. Dambury’s essential take on the event offers a fresh and personal perspective, incorporating multiple perspectives and a child protagonist without sacrificing nuance, and gives the stage to those too long overlooked in this tragedy. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

"Dambury’s essential take on the event offers a fresh and personal perspective, incorporating multiple perspectives and a child protagonist without sacrificing nuance, and gives the stage to those too long overlooked in this tragedy." —Publishers Weekly

"A chorus of voices brings humanity to a little-known moment in Caribbean history." —Kirkus Reviews

“Dambury’s important novel seeks to empower Guadeloupe’s oppressed by giving them voices and space to speak for themselves.” —Booklist

“By giving voice to the underrepresented in her society, [Dambury] does her part to bring about a sort of justice—or at least catharsis.” —Asymptote

“A brilliant example of subtlety and sensitivity that brings to life one of the most important dates in Guadeloupe’s history.” —Maryse Condé, author of Segu

“In this restaging of history, constructed as a quadrille, epic rifts of power have tragic consequences, yet Gerty Dambury also celebrates the strengths and joys of a community when its voices speak—and dance—together.” —Thomas C. Spear, Professor of French, CUNY

From the Publisher

2017-10-31
A schoolgirl seeks answers when her city explodes after long-simmering tension.Émilienne is the daughter of a bureaucrat in French-occupied Guadeloupe in 1967. The youngest of nine siblings—all named for their ambitious yet ineffectual father—she is her daddy's princess. Her family regards the 9-year-old as precocious, in need of protection. Outsiders consider her disarming, a girl who freely communes with the dead. Because of this, Émilienne serves as the novel's medium, calling upon those who have passed for answers after she witnesses unspeakable violence. The novel is based on a real event that occurred in Pointe-à-Pitre—three days in May when ongoing negotiations between bureaucrats and a construction workers' union devolved into the massacre Émilienne witnesses. Multiple voices, living and dead, are woven throughout, following the form of a Creole square dance called a quadrille. The rich assemblage of perspectives gives a pulse to an event formerly unacknowledged in French history. The larger backdrop to the story is the way imperialism grates in the present, affecting everyone from the innocent to the ignorant to the complicit. On one hand, there is Émilienne's beloved schoolteacher, Madame Ladal, who disappears following a classroom visit from a man who makes sinister assurances: "Don't mind me, children. I didn't come here for you." On the other is Émilienne's Uncle Justin, who declares, "I didn't even know anything was going on in La Pointe. Not a clue." In between are the silently compliant and selective snitchers, whatever brings the greater reward. Translated from the French by Miller, Dambury's ear for dialogue buoys her novel, though the labored use of the quadrille as an organizing device is a distraction.A chorus of voices brings humanity to a little-known moment in Caribbean history.

Kirkus Reviews