The Review of Contemporary Fiction

School Days by Patrick Chamoiseau
Marc Lowenthal

Patrick Chamoiseau. School Days. Trans. Linda Coverdale. Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1997. 146 pp. Paper: $13.00.

In School Days Patrick Chamoiseau (winner of the 1992 Prix Goncourt) recounts with bitter charm his introduction to the colonial education in the Martinique of the 1950s—the days when “the blue-eyed Gaul with hair as yellow as wheat was everybody’s ancestor.” The child Chamoiseau, “the little boy,” desperately hungry for exploration of the outside world, latches onto school as the pathway to it, only to discover that this path demands the eradication of the “barbarous,” “ol’~~nigger ways” of Creole. This is undertaken by the “Teacher,” a humorous exemplar of official culture with unhumor~~
ous methods of beating barbarity out of his students.
The little boy’s induction into the confining, yet ultimately salvatory, horizon of language takes place under the shadows of two mentors: the Teacher, the enforcer of the written word, and Big Bellybutton, the class outcast, the unknowing preserver of the underground spoken word, and keeper of the Creole legend. It is this tension between improper Creole tongue and proper French text that defines much of Chamoiseau’s work and provides much of this novel’s humor and delightfully ribald episodes. Chamoiseau’s writing, via Coverdale’s charged and inventive translation, bristles with energy, opening up portals into the Creole dialect with Rabelaisian gusto.
The humor carries a weight, though. Chamoiseau’s classmates are for the most part ostracized from any hope of a future in the colonies, and Big Bellybutton’s inability to culturally assimilate ultimately crushes his spirit. It is left to the author to try to salvage whatever troubled identity is left to the Caribbean individual, an effort that takes up where Aimé Cesaire’s “négritude” left off. The novel locates a meeting point for speech and writing that should carry resonance for anyone concerned with the politics of identity and language.
Chamoiseau’s novel Texaco won him the Prix Goncourt in 1992, and his Creole Folktales is already available in English. This novel should do well in bringing him further to an English-speaking audience. [Marc Lowenthal]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction School Days by Patrick Chamoiseau Marc Lowenthal Patrick Chamoiseau. School Days. Trans. Linda Coverdale. Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1997. 146 pp. Paper: $13.00. In School Days Patrick Chamoiseau (winner of the 1992 Prix Goncourt) recounts with bitter charm his introduction to the colonial education in the Martinique of the 1950s—the days when “the blue-eyed Gaul with hair as yellow as wheat was everybody’s ancestor.” The child Chamoiseau, “the little boy,” desperately hungry for exploration of the outside world, latches onto school as the pathway to it, only to discover that this path demands the eradication of the “barbarous,” “ol’~~nigger ways” of Creole. This is undertaken by the “Teacher,” a humorous exemplar of official culture with unhumor~~ ous methods of beating barbarity out of his students. The little boy’s induction into the confining, yet ultimately salvatory, horizon of language takes place under the shadows of two mentors: the Teacher, the enforcer of the written word, and Big Bellybutton, the class outcast, the unknowing preserver of the underground spoken word, and keeper of the Creole legend. It is this tension between improper Creole tongue and proper French text that defines much of Chamoiseau’s work and provides much of this novel’s humor and delightfully ribald episodes. Chamoiseau’s writing, via Coverdale’s charged and inventive translation, bristles with energy, opening up portals into the Creole dialect with Rabelaisian gusto. The humor carries a weight, though. Chamoiseau’s classmates are for the most part ostracized from any hope of a future in the colonies, and Big Bellybutton’s inability to culturally assimilate ultimately crushes his spirit. It is left to the author to try to salvage whatever troubled identity is left to the Caribbean individual, an effort that takes up where Aimé Cesaire’s “négritude” left off. The novel locates a meeting point for speech and writing that should carry resonance for anyone concerned with the politics of identity and language. Chamoiseau’s novel Texaco won him the Prix Goncourt in 1992, and his Creole Folktales is already available in English. This novel should do well in bringing him further to an English-speaking audience. [Marc Lowenthal]

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