I'm taking a week off to rest before the start of my favorite season, fall.
It is always tough to take a break from blogging so I may cheat and blog during my vacation.
If you miss me too much, you can watch this interview I did with TV5 monde and email me suggestions about how to learn to be more zen but be charitable and keep in mind that I am excitable because je suis pressée d’écrire.
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I'm not dead, just undead for a few more days.
To reassure yourself that I'm not just saying it, you can watch my interview on TV5 by clicking here.
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If you are missing me or just want to hear my voice in French, you can listen to an interview I did with the sublime Yasmine Chouaki here or just click on the embeded links below.
I'll be back soon.
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Shameless, but needed self-promotion. If you read French, you can read my latest interview here.
Thanks to Idriss Linge.
My reaction: I don't like to look at my navel.
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If you read French, you can read another review of my book, L'Empreinte des Choses Brisées by Jules Romuald Nkonlak. Didi I mention that I don't read review, I skim them and then I remind myself that I don't know everything about my book, which has a life and its own identity.
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If you understand French, you can read a critique of my novel L'Empreinte des Choses Brisées here. All of my thanks to its author Alliance Nyobia. How does it feel? Surreal for I'm just the slave of my imagination and of my art.
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I will start to blog again on Monday. I've been all over the world, well, kind of. I'm not back in New York yet, but I will back to a place where blogging is possible tomorrow.
There is so much to say. I'm just wondering how to say it....
By the way, it's funny, almost frightening how much L'Empreinte des Choses Brisées, my book, is devouring my life and my being. Unhelpful confession: I love being devoured.
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I'm done with Paris or rather Paris is done with me. So what did I learn? A lot, too much, but all of it is helpful.
I know I haven't written, but hey, sometimes a writer has to do what a writer has to do. I'm trying to say that Paris taught me to love myself and to love writing in itself without questioning my love for it and its usefulness. Paris forced me to mature in a few days and to learn that love is overrated and even dangerous when it becomes existential...
Am I going to blog more before the end of the year? I will try, but the end of 2010 is magical and I have to clean up some of the mess that came with my fresh enlightenment. If you are worried about me, don't be, I'm just crossing the Gobi and I will be back stronger.
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I'm still in Paris, bravely facing the cold even though it is kicking my you know what.
I had my 'presentation' for my book on Friday and I have to admit that I have no idea how things went. I'm mentally exhausted so it will take me a while, or not, to blog again. In the meantime, be patient for I will be back with a vengeance.
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It's after 5 am in Paris, but still my birthday in the states. I'm in such in terrible shape physically that I'm not sure how I should feel about being a year older...
The most important information is that my public event in the Lucernaire is canceled until further notice (it will probably happen at the end of January). The bad weather in Paris and my cold forced me to realize that it was too much to ask people, especially those who wanted to come to listen to me, to get out on a hellish winter weekday when they know they have to work the next day and would be worried about how to get home. Thus, I have decided to do a closed event in the Pavillon Élysée around the same question : are africanity, sexuality, and identity broken things?
The new event will be in the Pavillon Élysée, but by invitation only on a week from Friday. If you really wanted to come to hear me talk or that you really want to come to this event, email me and we will talk.
Yesterday (the Eight, my birthday) was such a moody day because of the snow, the icy roads, and the impossible conditions that truly, I felt like a New Yorker in Paris, I missed Manhattan and my fellow villagers can do everything attitude.
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I appeared on a show called le débat africain (in French) on RFI in which I asserted that there isn't such a thing as Africanity. It is a position on which I will elaborate on December 13 when at last, I'm having, at the Lucernaire in Paris (7 pm), a soirée to present my book, L'Empreinte des Choses Brisées and of course to sign copies. So if you are in Paris or just want to pick a fight with me or just to listen to something fresh on identity, sexuality and les choses brisées, come and bring a friend.
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Small article on my book L'Empreinte des Choses Brisées on the website of France-Amérique ! How does it feel? Well, like eating a great and outrageously cheap meal in Chinatown, I'm afraid that the worst may come after the digestion. I know, I know, I should be all verklempt but I'm a whiner but whiners (when they have talent) make great writers, which gives me hope.
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(...) today the “dominant masculine” no longer applies in grammar, and still no gender-neutral pronoun thrives. It turns out that it’s not just the conservatism of the pronoun system that’s blocking the gender-neutral pronoun. It’s also the fact that the speakers of English seem content to muddle along without this particular innovation. Even before the generic masculine started its decline, singular they was always an option, both in speech and, despite the tongue-clicking of purists, in serious writing as well. More recently, writers seeking to avoid the generic masculine have been plugging in the coordinate he or she, him or her, his or her(s), sometimes choosing slashed forms instead, he/she, him/her, his/her(s), despite long-standing objections that such constructions are cumbersome, especially when they’re repeated several times.
In fact, despite the almost universal condemnation of the coordinate he or she by supporters of gender-neutral pronouns, the rule books now opt for he or she and not an invented word to replace the generic he. Students who once were taught that the masculine pronoun must always be used in cases of mixed or doubtful gender are now taught instead to use coordinate forms, not for gender balance or grammatical precision, but simply because that’s the new rule. Those writers who question the rule, who realize that multiple he-or-she’s just don’t make for readable prose, won’t seek out a new gender-neutral pronoun. Instead they’ll recast some sentences as plural, and for the rest they’ll just take their chances with singular they. After all, if you, which is also gender neutral, can serve both for singular and plural, why can’t they do the same? In any case, after more than 100 attempts to coin a gender-neutral pronoun over the course of more than 150 years, thon and its competitors will remain what they always have been, the words that failed.
The issue of gender irks me less in English than in French for I have made the recent realization that it is easier to be gender-neutral in the former than in the latter. I had always assumed with foolish pride that French was a less sexist and gender-oriented language than English. My opinion changed when I decided that two of the main characters, Andrea and Leah, of my novel, L’Empreinte des Choses Brisées, weren't going to have a gender..I had read and loved Jeanette Winterson's Written on the body and thought unconscionably that it would interesting to try to write a story in French with gender-neutral characters without the issue of gender-neutrality being the main aspect of the story. I didn't realize how difficult that decision would make the story very challenging to write. In French, masculine pronouns are gender-neutral for characters are presumed to be male if the writer doesn't use the female pronoun elle or doesn't assert their gender. My point isn't very compelling, but it is that French is such a specific and a precise language that gender-neutrality is almost impossible to achieve because masculinity is assumed not only to be the norm, but to be all encompassing. To be frank, I'm not sure that I succeeded in making my characters gender-neutral for most people so far who have read the book assumed with a disturbing certainty that my characters can only be women in spite of the fact that I keep asserting that I don't know their gender, for they never told me what it was. In short, French makes androgyny and gender-neutrality difficult,.
As Eluard, I believe that words don't lie and that it has forced me to realize that in fact, language says a lot more than it should about gender and its place within a society. The argument isn't that language frames one's mind or conditions one's thinking, but rather that it mirrors most societal conditions and what has always been believed about gender.
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