Marie Léticée, "Camille's Lakou" (Vanderbilt UP, 2025)

Summary

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Podcast Summary:

New Books Network
Episode: Marie Léticée, "Camille's Lakou" (Vanderbilt UP, 2025)
Date: July 20, 2026
Host: Arnab Dutta Roy

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Episode Overview

This episode features a rich conversation with author Akusua Fadhili Afriqa (also known as Marie Léticée) and translator Kevin Meehan about Camille’s Lakou—a powerful novel examining identity, memory, colonial inheritance, and postcolonial Caribbean life. The discussion delves into the writers’ personal and academic journeys, the novel’s thematic heart, the symbolism and lived reality of the “lakou,” challenges of translation, and the relational dynamics between people and place in the Caribbean context.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Journeys as Writer and Translator

[03:32 – 16:09]

• Akusua Fadhili Afriqa (Marie Léticée) describes growing up in Guadeloupe, her early dreams of writing, and the discouragement she faced from teachers who questioned her talent due to her background. She discusses the “writing wound” from these experiences and how her mother's unfulfilled desire to write inspired her first novel, Moonlakou.
  • Notable Quote:
    • “I’ve had this writing wound ever since I was a little girl…” (05:00–06:00)
    • “Moonlakou for me is a book that I wrote in honor of my mother, her struggles... very connected to my mother, very connected to the land, very, very connected to my identity.” (06:37)
• Kevin Meehan shares his path to translation, motivated initially by French surrealist poetry and gradually moving to Francophone Caribbean literature due to a need for translation across colonial language divides. He discusses previous projects with Marie and emphasizes both literary motivation and the broader goal of “striking a blow against the colonial divisions of language and nation.”
  • Notable Quote:
    • “It’s very important to have translations so that people from another part of the region can, you know, can understand what is being written and being expressed by their cousins and neighbors…” (08:02)
    • “For me, being able to strike a blow against [the language barrier] as well as make some literary joy available to readers that would never have had it otherwise.” (13:30)

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2. Introduction to the Novel: Camille’s Lakou

[16:09 – 23:21]

• Marie introduces the book as “an open door to the genuine Caribbean Guadeloupean heart,” a microcosm that examines the fabrication of Caribbean identity through colonial engineering. Through a young girl’s eyes, the novel reveals the layered social and racial stratifications of Guadeloupe, emphasizing how Black labor underpins the island’s economy.
  • Notable Quote:
    • “Everybody has a place in this world... the black person… go work in the field, get on the bus owned by Indian people… go to the Lebanese and Syrian stores… everybody is on the back of the Guadeloupean person.” (17:18–18:40)
• The protagonist, Camille, ultimately “alchemizes” her painful origins, turning generational trauma into empowerment and hope.
  • Notable Quote:
    • “She kind of alchemizes that and then understands... it’s all about how you’re going to look at what you want to create in life. So the book becomes, if you want, advice to people—basically, focus on what you want in life.” (20:10)
• Kevin Meehan elaborates on the book’s structure: a “story within a story,” in which adult Camille shares her life’s story with her Jamaican assistant Evelyn, counseling her through her own struggles—a dual coming-of-age framing device.
  • Notable Quote:
    • “It’s like a double Bildungsroman... because of that double-barrel structure.” (22:13)

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3. “Lakou” as Symbol, Setting, and Character

[23:21 – 32:05]

• The Lakou is not just a courtyard but a living force—both nurturing and oppressive—shaping its inhabitants’ destinies, social relations, and aspirations.
• Marie describes the painful realities of the urban lakou—poverty, solidarity, and the fermenting environment compared to a compost heap where good and bad grow together. Education is seen as an occasional ticket out, but the lakou continues to mark its children.
• Kevin Meehan contextualizes the lakou regionally, connecting the Guadeloupean variation to Haitian, Jamaican (“yard”), and Trinidadian versions, and references literary theorist Miriam Chauncey’s concept of “lakou/yard consciousness.”
  • Notable Quote:
    • “It is... a space in which... the family or kinship, cultural group can gather, rest, know itself, refuse dispersion and pass on knowledge… from generation to generation.” (Chauncey, quoted at 30:44)

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4. Place, Migration, Diaspora & The Relational Bildungsroman

[32:05 – 42:44]

• The novel entwines personal development with spatial and communal contexts—each character’s coming-of-age is inseparable from place, migration, and the historical weight of their environment.
• Marie explains that environment and community deeply shape who one becomes, echoing Creole and French proverbs about forging one’s own life—yet there’s always agency in choosing what to internalize or overcome.
  • Notable Quote:
    • “We become the sum of the five or seven people around you. You absorb that energy… if you consume news and negativity… you begin to shape your world based on the information that is programming you.” (37:08)
• Meehan links the novel’s style to literary naturalism, with characters likened to animals or insects, highlighting both environmental determinism and moments of rupture and possibility.
  • Notable Quote:
    • “That dialectic is beautiful… how much of the Lakou travels with Camille when she moves to Florida?” (39:55)
• The intergenerational transmission of wisdom through storytelling is a key element that keeps cultural memory alive.

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5. The Challenge and Politics of Translating Camille’s Lakou

[42:44 – 52:21]

• Kevin Meehan describes the translation process as unusually collaborative, with intense, respectful debate—especially about how to translate the novel’s multilingual texture (French, Creole, Jamaican Patois, Spanglish, English).
• Initially, Kevin rendered Creole passages in Jamaican Patois, but Marie insisted that Guadeloupean Creole must remain authentic and present, not overwritten by another Caribbean vernacular.
  • Notable Quotes:
    • “I decided I’m going to... render those passages in patois. While that was well received from various critics, the author did not like it at all…” (44:37)
    • “I wanted to fight the idea that anything Caribbean was the same… I didn’t want my Guadeloupean voice to be silenced once.” (47:56)
• The final translation “braids” English and Creole, with no translation for the Creole passages, trusting that readers interested in the culture will be drawn in—and possibly use dictionaries as Marie herself did to learn other languages.
• The language of the novel, both in the original and translation, is best called “Guadeloupean”—not simply French or Creole, but a hybrid unique to its place and people.
  • Notable Quote:
    • “The title is in Creole, not French... we need to speak about the language of the novel as Guadeloupean.” (51:09)

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6. Colonial Memory and Layered Identity

[52:21 – 62:46]

• The novel’s characters—and Marie herself—negotiate identities that are deeply entangled with French, African, indigenous, Indian, and wider Caribbean inheritances.
• Marie highlights the unavoidability of French influence (given education and language), while also expressing the irrepressible, embodied sense of African and indigenous presence in music, food, and culture.
  • Notable Quotes:
    • “I have no other choice but accept that part of my identity. Although every cell of my being are screaming for my African ancestry…” (54:34)
    • “Yes, I’m French, but I’m animated with a spirit of African descent… my grandmother was part Kalinago… all of these cultures are part of who I am.” (56:25)
• Kevin Meehan reads a passage showing the racial and economic stratification of 1960s Guadeloupe—the rigid “order of things” established by colonial history.

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7. Key Takeaways from Camille’s Lakou

[63:01 – 65:38]

• Marie’s Message: Be aware and conscious; we create our own worlds through focus and intention. Don’t endlessly scratch at old wounds—instead, focus on possibility and what you want to create with your life.
  • Quote: “We create our own world. Basically. It's like we're God, you know, our mind is our wand, you know, so learn how to control and use that mind.” (63:19)
• Kevin Meehan’s Message: Savor the sensory world of the novel, but also “know all of yourself”—embracing the complexity and multiplicity within.
  • Quote: “You really do have to know yourself. But not just know yourself, you got to know all of yourself… And I think that's what makes this such a powerful novel…” (64:24)

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Memorable Passages (Read Aloud)

[65:53 – 71:14]

• Marie and Kevin read paired passages in French and English, honoring Marie’s mother and depicting the origin of Camille—“that stolen pleasure robbed from her mother’s innocent youth.”
• A vivid description of the Laku as a web that both traps and shapes life, “like a toothless mouth opening up to reveal a few decayed stumps.”
• This lived reality of the Laku closes the episode with a somber, textured sense of place.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

1. On the writing wound and identity:
   “That wound stayed with me. And that's why I feel like it was so late until I decided, I'm going to go for it… it's very connected to my mother. It’s very connected to the land. It’s very, very connected to my identity.” — Akusua Fadhili Afriqa (Marie Léticée), 06:13

2. On translation as anti-colonial practice:
   “For me, being able to strike a blow against [the language barrier] as well as, of course, make some literary joy available to readers that would never have had it otherwise.” — Kevin Meehan, 13:30

3. On the structural hierarchy in Guadeloupe:
   “That money that the Guadeloupean person got so, so difficult, with so much difficulty feeds all of these other people… everybody is on the back of the Guadeloupean person.” — Marie, 18:20

4. On the “lakou” as both prison and potential:
   “You could see human nature at its worst because there was nothing to go for other than misery… At the same time, good things happened in the lakou and good people came out of the lakou.” — Marie, 25:47

5. On language and translation choices:
   “There are nine different Creoles in the world… it's in the book, it has a place, and it needs to stay… Kevin did a very good job in braiding the English… while allowing the reader to experience the Creole language.” — Marie, 49:09

6. On layered identity:
   “I have no other choice but accept that part of my identity. Although every cell of my being are screaming for my African ancestry... we’ve been able to make it our own, to make our own language... everything infiltrating and finding their space, you know, like a Creole garden.” — Marie, 54:34

7. On the reader’s task:
   “Know yourself. But know all of yourself.” — Kevin Meehan, 64:24

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Key Timestamps

• 03:52 – Marie shares her writer’s journey and early blocks.
• 07:38 – Kevin details his translation motivations and history.
• 16:25 – Introduction to the novel’s main themes and approach.
• 21:16 – The novel’s narrative structure explained.
• 23:21 – Introduction and depth of the “lakou.”
• 32:05 – Bildungsroman, space, and relational development.
• 42:44 – Translating multilingual complexity and co-translator dynamics.
• 53:48 – Navigating multiple colonial and cultural inheritances.
• 62:46 – Final thoughts on what readers should take away.
• 65:53 – Readings of favorite and signature passages.

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Recap & Takeaways

• Camille’s Lakou is a nuanced, sensory, and layered exploration of identity, history, and communal life in the Caribbean, told through the dual coming-of-age of Camille and Evelyn.
• The novel’s structure and language reflect the complicated, sometimes fraught inheritance of colonization, migration, and cultural mixing.
• The collaborative translation process foregrounded authenticity, respect for specificity, and a refusal to flatten Caribbean identities or languages.
• Above all, the novel urges readers toward consciousness, self-knowledge, and the understanding that our realities are (to some degree) of our own making.

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For those who haven’t listened:
This episode stands as a deep and intimate look into the making, meaning, and translation of a landmark work of Caribbean literature—moving from the personal to the political, the familial to the communal, and the particular to the universal.

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Transcript

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[Kevin Meehan]

welcome to the New Books Network

[Arnab Dutta Roy]

welcome to New Books Network. I'm your host Arnab Dutta Roy, an Assistant professor of World Literature and Postcolonial Theory at Florida Gulf Coast University. Today I have the great privilege of welcoming Professors Akusua Fadhili Afriqa and Kevin Meehan, the author and translator of the novel Camille's Luko, which is the subject of our conversation. Before we begin, I would like to briefly introduce our two guests. Professor Acouswa Fadhili Afrika, AKA Marie Letische is an author and scholar specializing in Francophone literatures and cultures with a particular focus on Caribbean postcolonial dynamics. Originally from Guadeloupe, her work explores questions of identity, memory transmission, and power relations inherited from colonial history. Her previous works include Education, Assimilation and the Literary Journey of The French Caribbean 2009, a critical study examining the relationships between education, assimilation and identity formation in French Caribbean literature. She is also the author of Duart Lotterboer 2020, which extends through fiction her ongoing reflections on belonging, memory and cultural inheritance. Professor Kevin Meehan has taught in the UCF English department since 1996, specializing in Caribbean and multi ethnic US literatures, environmental humanities and climate change education for Sustainable Development. He published a translation of the Guadalupian novel Camus le Caux by Mary Letiche, Vanderbilt University Press, 2025 and is the author of People Get African American and Caribbean Cultural Exchange, University Press of Mississippi, 2009, as well as numerous essays, videos and podcasts. He has lectured and taught in Haiti, St. Kitts Nevis, Antigua, Trinidad and India. Professor Meehan is also a professional musician who has played a wide range of styles and toured globally for more than three decades. He owns and operates an independent label called Sugar City Music, and you can find more about his musical activities at www. Sugarcitymusic.com welcome to this podcast, guys. It's such an honor to be speaking with you today.

[Kevin Meehan]

It's great to see you and speak to you too, Arnab.

[Akusua Fadhili Afriqa (Marie Letische)]

Thank you for having us.

[Arnab Dutta Roy]

Of course. Okay, let's jump right into it. Tell us a little bit about your journeys as writer and translator. What inspires you to do what you do as storytellers, academics, educators. Can we begin with you, Akuswa?

[Akusua Fadhili Afriqa (Marie Letische)]

Well, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. My journey as the writer, Wow. I think if I can remember, it goes really far. It goes to when I was a young girl in Guadeloupe, where I'm sitting right now today, dreaming about being a writer and realizing that, wait a minute, this is. This is not for people like me. Because, you know, in the French system, I was reading all the classics of, you know, the Rousseau, the Victor Hugo and all of these people and realizing that I didn't really know anybody like me who was, like, writing and who was honored or, you know, studied and taught at the school. So I was like, nah, this is not for me. The other thing was, it felt like now that I'm looking at it, I'm thinking I've had this writing wound ever since I was a little girl as well, because I remember in one of my little compositions at school, a teacher had accused me of having had somebody write the compositions for me, yet it was the last composition that she handed back because she was giving everybody, you know, their composition and making comments like French teachers do on everybody's work, and everybody knows everybody's great. And I was like, I could not understand why I was not receiving my. My copy yet, you know, because they usually reserve the best for last. And I was like, there's no way, you know, but mine was the last one. I was like, I don't understand. She forgot me. And then when she, she, you know, she gave it to me and she's like, you didn't write this? And I was shocked. How could she even think that I didn't write this? I mean, there I was, a little girl, you know, from a very poor background in neighborhood, with a mom and stepfather who did not have a great education, and she was telling me I treated. So that's one instance, one example of, I think, what contributed to my writing blocks over the years. And then later on in college, I get pretty much the same comment from a French English professor in college. She's telling me, oh, Leticia, you don't know how to write yet. She gave me the grade, but that works. And that wound stayed with me. And that's why I feel like it was so late until I decided, I'm going to go for it. And I went for it because of hearing my mother always saying she wishes she could write, so she could. She would write her story. So Moonlight Fu, for me, is a book that I wrote in honor of my mother, her struggles and how life, you know, where. Wherever life took us. So that's my thing about writing. It's very connected to my mother. It's very connected to the land. It's very, very connected to my identity. Who am I, et cetera, and where am I going? And the relationship with Kevin, I think I let Kevin, you know, maybe say. Because, yeah, I think he has a lot to say on that. You know, we've known each other for. I don't even know how many years. We've been colleagues. Yes, yes, we've been friends. You know, it's like family. So I think that's the best combo for, you know, the dialogue of translation. So I let Kevin, you know, talk about that.

[Kevin Meehan]

Once again, great to be here. And I would. I would answer the question more from the angle of the translator, Okosa, who I also refer to as Marie, but we'll say Okosa until I feel I can't anymore. She answered it from a creative writing standpoint. I want to answer the opening question from a translator's standpoint. And, you know, when I. When I got into graduate school, one of the things that drove me was a desire to translate. Like, I would go to the bookstore and I would see a book of French surrealist poetry as a young. A younger guy and. And just fell in love with. With Breton and Robert Desnos and. And some other of the great surrealist poets. And then I said, I got to read these guys in the original language, and I would struggle and, you know, go to my Alliance Francaise classes and try to get a toehold into French so that I could read the French surrealist poets in the original. And then, you know, when I finally got into graduate school and. And. And events conspired to drive me in the direction of Francophone Caribbean literature, among other literatures, then I saw that there was actually a need for translation. And I still, even to this day, now I have my name on the COVID of a novel, and it says co, you know, translated by. And I still don't really think of myself as a translator, but I can see over the course of 40 years that that has been a central piece for me. And certainly once I got into the French Caribbean writing, I saw a need, not just a desire for my own, you know, my own enlightenment and edification, but in order to sort of strike a blow against the colonial divisions of language and nation. It's very important to have translations so that people from another Part of the region can, you know, can understand what is being. What is being written and being expressed by their cousins and neighbors in another region that speaks a different language. And I could say that Akosu and I, this is not our first rodeo as co translators and that in 2000 we translated a cache of a folio of Haitian indigenous writing. And there was a really interesting review in Haiti in. In the 1920s called LA Review and Dijon, the Indigenous Review. And in one of their issues, they had published sort of like an anthology of Haitian poetry from the. From the indigenous movement. And amazingly, none of those poems had been. And they used to. This is like world historical stuff in Haitian literature. It's equivalent to the Harlem Renaissance in the. In the United States or the Beacon movement in Trinidad. These writers in the Indigenous Review were the ones that were transforming Haitian poetry, and yet they hadn't been published into English. And so we took six or seven of those poems and worked on our translation. And it was, you know, it was a. A beautiful exercise. And then I think in my own career, I then became very interested in the Guyanese French Guyanese writer Leon Damas, and worked very hard on. On translating a volume of his short stories that had. He's known as a poet in world literature circles, Damas, but he was a very, very complete writer and wrote an, you know, just wrote amazing essays, unbelievable essays. He should be known just as an essayist. But then he was also a fiction writer and wrote fiction. And so I thought that's something that needs to be known outside of the francophone world, is that Demas is more than just the Negritude poet. And Okosuwa also loves Damas. I know. And so we began collaborating on that project as co translators. And you know, that still is there waiting. You know, we've had some difficulty with Damas's literary executors giving permission to publish, but we have finished the publications and even had them accepted for publication and couldn't get it. Couldn't get the permission. So that, you know, that took us to 2016, I would say. And then something momentous happened, which was that Akosa Marie's novel came out, Moonlaku. And I'm a big fan of hers and a strong supporter of hers and a colleague. And it was just such a joy to see this book get to the finish line and be published. And then I started reading it and it was like a whole nother level of joy because the book just moved me to my, you know, to my down in my soul. It was a great piece of writing. It's very funny when you read it. I mean, it's Marie. I'm going to call her Marie now, since we're speaking about the writer of the novel. Marie's writing style is extremely witty. It has a very cinematic quality, so you can see and you can hear, you can smell and taste all of the, all the details of her life in Guadalupe. And then also it's, you know, it's a. It's a very. It's a very sad novel in some ways. And, and I would read it and then I would reread it and, and I would get a very different feeling each time I would reread it. But through all of it, I was like, I must, I must translate this novel. Nobody else is going to do it, I don't think. And so this is like the first cool thing that's come out of Guadalupe in quite a while. And as I say in my translator's preface, it zeros in on a period in time that is also underrepresented and a social class that is underrepresented in the Guadalupian novel. And there are actually, when you get into it, there's been a tradition of Guadalupian women writing coming of age novels, but none of them really captured the reality of Munlaku. And so for all these reasons, I was like, gotta do it. And of course, Akosuwa was very encouraging of that. And then over the years, we, you know, we got, we. I would make progress and then we got, we got the big interruption of COVID and then we came back and we finally reconnected after Covid and got to the finish line. We'll probably talk about some of the tensions that we had in the end game, but we got to the finish line and it's just again, a great joy to see this book available to people in English. And for me, the motivation is always to try to defeat the barriers of language and nationalism that are legacy of the colonial influence in the Caribbean. And, you know, I would have to say globally, but certainly in the Caribbean, that's one of the big barriers to regional unity is the, is the language barrier or barriers. And so for me, being able to strike a blow against that as well as, of course, make some literary joy available to readers that would never have had it otherwise. And by the way, Our mutual friend, Dr. Curtis Austin is a civil rights and black power historian friend of ours, used to teach at UCF with us, and he's visiting me and we Trade books. And so I got a copy of his latest book, and I gave him a copy of Moonlaku or of Camille's Laku, the translation. And he started reading it, and he immediately couldn't put it down and said, this reminds me of where I grew up. He's from rural Mississippi. And so, you know, that to me was like total existential validation of the whole project of trying to bring this novel, which is, you know, to me, beautiful, and it's original, but bring it into English so that a reader who doesn't read French or Creole can have access to it. And it seems like it does have that kind of universal appeal that I. That I felt. And so we'll see. You know, it's still a new. It's still a new thing to have it in print, but so far we've had. We've had really good feedback on it.

[Arnab Dutta Roy]

So I do want to talk a little bit more about, like, the novel in general. Right. Like, Akuso, would you want to, like. What would you like, say to introduce this novel to. To our listeners?

[Akusua Fadhili Afriqa (Marie Letische)]

Well, to introduce Camille's LaCour or Moonlakp, really, what would I say? I'd say that it's an open door to the genuine Caribbean Guadalupe and Heart, really, because it exposes this fabrication of colonial powers that basically engineered a new people in the Caribbean basin. And in that novel, it's like a microcosm or, you know, a little window of what does that mean, you know, to be Guadalupean? How do you. How does one become Guadalupean? Or it could be a Jamaican, it could be, you know, Trinidadian. But, yeah, it's this. This engineering. Engineering of the people. So what the little girl who talks in the novel, what she does is through her eyes, showing you the different layers of the type of people who evolved in Guadeloupe. So you get to see who is who. You get to see the place. That's what she says. Everybody has a place in this world. And then she says, well, it looks like, to me, it looks like the black person, the black people are at the bottom, because there they are. They go. They go work in the field of the big key. And with that money, they will hop in the bus of the Indian people who came after slavery and who became, you know, those who direct the transportation system in Guadalupe. They get in their buses to go spend the money that you got from the big cake in the stores of the Lebanese and the Syrian who, you know, they are very much part of the island. So that money that the Guadalupean person got so, so difficult, with so much difficulty feeds all of these other people. In the end, what is left that's everybody is on the back of the Guadalupe and person. So that's what she exposes. And she, and she says, well, it looks like this is the way things are and nobody says anything about it. And then, but she's like, I'm questioning all of this French.

[Kevin Meehan]

The phrase is je m de monde.

[Akusua Fadhili Afriqa (Marie Letische)]

Yeah, it's like coming back. Yeah, it's like a litany in, in the novel, you know, she's like, yeah. And I was wondering. Yeah, so makes you think because as the reader, she engages you into that reality. So you yourself begin to wonder what is this all about? So that's what I would say. And then of course, you know, as a Guadalupean person trying to get a better life at that time of history, staying in Guadeloupe was not the best for the Guadalupe. In person that was all organized because if you wanted to continue in your studies, you had to go to France. So basically little Camille does take that route, but then ends up finding herself in America. And then you realize, you know, when she looks back, she's like, nothing is really by accident. And then, and that is, that is even more profound because the way she starts the novel, she talks very briefly about what happened to her mother, which was a rape. So out of that rape came that little girl. So you begin to realize that that's interesting because in the background of all Caribbean, you know, culture lays this picture of weight, of taking and taking and taking. And that's, that's. That's the story of Camille. That's how she comes to this world. But then she kind of alchemizes that and then understands that, you know, nothing is by accident, nothing is a mistake. It's all about how you're going to, to. To look at what you want to create in life. So the book becomes, if you want, you know, like advice to people, you know, on basically focus on what you want in life.

[Kevin Meehan]

Can I add, can I add something?

[Akusua Fadhili Afriqa (Marie Letische)]

Yes, sure.

[Kevin Meehan]

Just to say something about the structure. I thought it was a very appealing structure. Everything that, that A. Kosoa just said. Yeah, I. She's. She's perfect in explaining it. But what I want to say is that it's actually a story within a story. Camille's story is an as told to story within the bookend framing of the narrative which is. Is framed by the adult Camille in Florida and she has a young Jamaican woman who is working as her assistant and is having. Is pregnant and having some, you know, having troubles dealing with that and then the young child that comes out of that. And so in order to sort of provide a, a, a, a, a calming influence on Evelyn, the young Jamaican woman Camille starts to tell her story. And it's, and it's, it's almost like a, a talk therapy session. And the way that Camille is showing her observation of the world is a way of helping Evelyn adopt the same technique of observing and, you know, and seeing your place in the world and, and accepting it without, without trying to be traumatized by it and then succeeding. And so there's a, there's that and that's the framing device. The beginning and the end of the book are showing the relationship between Camille and Evelyn and, and it's actually her narrating the story to her secretary that is the occasion for the, the bulk of the book which is the as told to story of young Camille. And I just love that structure. So it's like a double Bildungsroman, if you will. And Arnab, I know you're a scholar of the post colonial buildings Roman, this one is really interesting because of that double barrel structure to it and so that, you know, that makes it a book that hits on all those existential levels that Maria's talking about. But, you know, for the literary critic woo, there's a lot to enjoy.

[Arnab Dutta Roy]

I do have a question on the buildings Roman later on, but I do want us to stay momentarily with the word lakot. I know it's a term that can roughly be translated as front yard, but it clearly carries a much deeper cultural, social and symbolic weight within Caribbean cultural context. In the novel, the laku embodies a personality of its own, and it also seems like a character that is alive. One passage that particularly stood out to me describing the laku describes the Lakhu as something that stifled its inhabitants who remained its prisoners. It was like a snake that swallows its prey little by little, bathing them in a paralyzing venom of poverty that sticks to your skin. This suggests a powerful, even suffocating presence. Clearly, the laku plays an important role in the lives of characters such as Camille. In the translator's note. Kevin, you also discussed the Laku spectrum, distinguishing the Guadalupian laku from the Haitian or the Jamaican variety. Can you both elaborate on the significance of the laku in the novel? Koswa, can we start with you?

[Akusua Fadhili Afriqa (Marie Letische)]

Okay, yes. The lacu in Guadeloupe evolved from when all the people who were working in agriculture in the countryside could no Longer really survive with the sugar cane or all of these little jobs that evolved around, you know, sugarcane, little by little were disappearing. So these people just carried their home, most of them, and deposited their home around the main city of Point A Pitre, where everything at this time was the, the belly button of, of, of Guadeloupe. Everybody from all sides of the island converged and then around that city. You know, it's like if you read Cesaire and then he explains, you know, the place where he was from, it's like it's dirty, it's unorganized. I mean there are, there's no storage. Nothing was, was put in place as an infrastructure. People just, you know, put their homes, their two, two room shack just landed them there and then created their own community. So in this community, everybody knew each other, everybody supported each other, but also you could see the pain. You could see human nature at its worst because there was nothing to go for other than misery. And then it's like misery was calling more misery because of course, everybody in, in that situation, they're all focusing on the negativity of their lives. So they're creating that. Everybody's sitting in that. In my little mind of a, of a little girl who was just observing everything around her. I could, I could see like when it was raining and the water was coming up, all these worms that were just like, yeah, you know, you know something. So that was in my mind what I was seeing as Guadalupe people in the LaCour, you know, that's. They were festering in the heat and in the pain and they were fighting. They didn't have the words, you know, so that what was creating this environment. At the same time good things happened in the lau and good people came out of the la. So that's why I always say, well, it's like if you take, how do you call that? The French word is, you know, you know, like whatever, whatever you're using to ferment vegetable and stuff. I can't, I can't think of the English word right now, but out of all of these smelling wh. Things always come out. Good things, the best fruit, the juiciest, you know, fruits and vegetables. So that, that is what the lapu was at this time. And so the, that's, that's why I described it the way I described it. Because if you were just caught in that web, you stayed in there and you recreated it. Now if you were able to elevate yourself a little bit, which I believe education, when school really began and you know Kids began to go to school over there. That gave you a window of the possibilities out there and a way to step out of it. But I still cherish that time in the lacoon, you know, and realizing what it was really. It was just a field, you know, of all possibilities. Actually.

[Kevin Meehan]

Yeah, I, I want to speak a little bit. Well, actually that was a great opening statement by a Kosoa because that, the, the idea of the agricultural workers coming into the city is exactly how the, the same thing formed in Jamaica. And by the way, in Jamaica you use the word yard and, and laku is the Creole word for laur in French, which means courtyard. And then in, in English or Jamaican patois, it gets condensed down to the word yard. And the yards began with people who had been working on the plantations and then their, their quote unquote, owners, so called owners were renting them out as domestic labor in Kingston. And they, they, they had to have somewhere to stay. That's the beginning of the yard in, in Kingston, in Haiti. It starts in the countryside for sure. And it's like the, you know, the, the first homestead after the Haitian War of Independence. And then over time and you know, get. So we're going back 200 years now but, or more but going then into the, into the 20th century, you do have people leaving the countryside and coming in and, and making an urban laku in Trinidad, another place where there's yards, they're built on the top of British army barracks that were abandoned after World War I. And so that's, that's something about the Trinidadian yard. But I wanted to read a brief passage from a woman named Miriam Chauncey who is a great novelist and theorist from Haiti. And she just published a book where she develops the idea of la coup slash yard consciousness. And so I love that because like, you know, as I see it cross culturally, she was really pushing it as a, from a theoretical angle. So I just want to read a couple of sentences from Chauncey. As Chauncey sums up laku yard consciousness, it emerges from a syncretic social space. That quote serves not as a, not as a space of assimilation, but as one of reconfiguration in which African cultural antecedents are guiding principles and inspirations alongside rather than in spite of concepts adopted and adapted from dominant cultures within hegemonic colonial systems that remain formative whether in post colonial in the Americas or Europe or post colony in African after Mbembe systems. That's a long quote from, from Chauncey. It is. This is the last Sentence. Now, it is, moreover, a space in which, quote, the family or kinship, cultural group can gather, rest, know itself, refuse dispersion and pass on knowledge from one to the other, horizontally or across time, vertically, from generation to generation. And so I think that that's, you know, that's a very, I think a stronger, more positive assessment of the, of the Laku. But it encompasses a lot of what Okosuwa opened up with. And anyway,

[Arnab Dutta Roy]

this is perfect. I love the idea of Laku consciousness. And this kind of gives us a perfect transition into our next question, which is, I mean, I did read the novel as a distinctive work of the Bildungsroman. The novel presents multiple intertwined coming of age arcs, most notably those of Camille and Evelyn, while also suggesting that individual development is inseparable from spatial and communal contexts. In this sense, the character's growth unfolds alongside the. The evolution of the places that they inhabit, whether it's Florida, Jamaica, Guadalupe. Can you speak more about this relational mode of coming of age in which personal formation is deeply intertwined with place, migration and diasporic experiences? Akusua.

[Akusua Fadhili Afriqa (Marie Letische)]

Wow, that's a very interesting question. And I must say that writing the novel, I didn't think about any of that really. But it's nice to see that this is what came out. And now, you know, we have that question. Going back to how I described the la cool and how people evolved in there and, you know, all of this suffering and all of this misery. I really believe that, you know, we have this Creole proverb that says, jean Ho rangier cabanaut, c' est Jean que d', uniform, meaning whichever way you make your bed, that's how you're going to lay in it. You know, you made it, you're going to lay in it. We also have that phrase from Voltaire who says, il faut cultivais notre jardin. We must cultivate our garden. And the garden could be anything, right? But in Guadeloupe we have what it, what is called the, the jardin Creole, the Creole garden, which is, you know, anti the system. Because this is where, you know, somebody, when they have their house or even their little shack, always will grow, you know, food, medicinal plants, and always have trees around the home where every, all of these, all of nature will work together, you know, and the fruits of all these trees and, you know, plants and flowers is always going to be shared with the rest of the community. So I say all of this to explain the fact that I think the environment has a lot to say about how we Come about, you know, so it's like a child, you know, growing up in a family. And. And we also know that no two children grow up in the same family, because by the time you get the first child, that's a family, the second child comes, that's a different family. So everybody contributes and understand and, you know, takes in whatever they're going to take and will deal with that to become whoever they're going to be. So if. So that explains why when Camille. Camille is in the lau, she's observing it, but it's like she is above the laku. She's. Because she's observing, you know, she's not. She's not really acting the la coup. So that's why she's able to extract herself from it and move. And then, you know, it's like wherever she's gonna go, since her mind is fixed on what she wants to do based on what she observes, she's going to evolve. And I think that's the same thing that happens with Evelyn, you know, moving from Jamaica to Guadeloupe and embracing all of this culture, but at the same time, recreating or not recreating, creating the fear of her father. Because if you remember, the father did not want her to go to Guadeloupe because he said and spoke it. He said, both Guadalupe and them, they're going to take advantage of your youth. And then they're going to. And he spoke it and it happened to her. That's where it came in.

[Arnab Dutta Roy]

Yeah.

[Akusua Fadhili Afriqa (Marie Letische)]

Yes. And she has to live with that. And then I think that in the novel, Evelyn is there to teach us, to show all of us that, you know, you create the world in which you evolve. So it's up to you to accept that, be aware of it, and do something with it. And hopefully she will get that. She will get there. So, yes, I believe the environment creates, you know, the. You know, if the person just accepts it, that's where. And that's who you believe to be, you know, because, you know, I did some yoga, you know, I learned yoga, I became a yoga teacher and everything. And I remember our guru telling us, yes, whatever you eat, that's what you are. You eat pig. You're a pig. Because it's true. You're eating, you know, you. You're eating something that is nur. Nurturing yourselves, you know, so the. The moment you eat a banana, you a banana, you know, so that got me into thinking about whatever I put in my mouth. So, yeah, basically we had to be conscious because we become and Also, these people say you become the sum of the five or seven people around you. You become that. You absorb that this energy that is floating is not just like, there. It does something to your psyche. So. And if you consume, like, news and all of this negativity in the world, you begin to really shape your own world based on the information that is, you know, programming yourselves and programming you and to. To. To react a certain way. So I think that this is what we see in the model. I don't. I hope I answered the question because I got, like, excited.

[Arnab Dutta Roy]

Thank you so much, Kevin.

[Kevin Meehan]

I can add a little bit to that, and that's a very beautiful question. Thank you for that. I think that the book has this very powerful dialectic between the environmental determinism of the milieu and really, from a literary critic point of view, I think that those sections in the novel where Marie is really nailing down the environmental influence, it reads like, what's the Zola style?

[Akusua Fadhili Afriqa (Marie Letische)]

Naturalism.

[Kevin Meehan]

Naturalism. It's literary natural naturalism. And you have people and environments likened to animals, to the snake, to ants, to crabs, to pigs. And, you know, this is naturalist literary technique, but. But, but right. Head and head and. And. And. And fist against it is this young Camille who says, je mu du mande. And there's like a rupture with her consciousness of her consciousness within this environment that is trying really hard to frame her in particular ways. And she just looks at it and says, je du monde. I'm wondering about that. And that dialectic is beautiful. And then, you know, you see the adult Camille using the same techniques. For me, what was the most interesting about, you know, the way Arnab, you framed it in speaking about specific places and how specific places and geographies influence you. And you're in. Influence a person or a character's development. One of the things that was most interesting to me in this novel was what, What? Here's the Camille from Guadalupe and the Camille from the Lacu. And then there's the Camille who's an adult and is living in a gated community in Florida, which is a very different environment. And, and. And, you know, as I read it and reread it and translated it and thought about it, I was like, how much of the Laku travels with Camille, if any of it, when she moves to Florida and is now, you know, is now operating out of a very beautiful house of villa, really in a. In a gated community. And as I thought about it, I thought actually she takes a lot of the leku with her and, you know, you'll read in the opening description how she's looking at her villa, but it's modeled on certain things that are marked to Guadalupe. And then the main thing to me was that the whole relationship between Camille and Evelyn is intersubjective and it's collective and it's her almost, you know, she's helping Evelyn make a living. But there's a lot of other things beyond the material relationship that, you know, that, that, that passed between Camille and Evelyn. And to me, that kind of inner subjective and, and, you know, orientation and mutual aid energy is something that comes from the la coup.

[Akusua Fadhili Afriqa (Marie Letische)]

Yeah. And also, if I can just say something before I forget, it's really the storytelling. Like, you know, Khmer is a star storyteller, which is a Caribbean or, you know, indigenous way of passing on values to the next generation. So you see this generational and, you know, cultural skills that you pass on to the next generation through storytelling. So hopefully that is going to continue. So you can tell that it's not, it's not a frame, it's really a flow. Things are going to continue.

[Kevin Meehan]

Yeah.

[Arnab Dutta Roy]

So clearly, I mean, I see like such a dynamic interaction between the person and the place. Both are changing each other. And that is so beautiful. Our next question is in the translator's note. Kevin, you reflect on the challenges of translating Camille's Lacot, particularly given the novel's rich linguistic texture, which blends French Creole, Jamaican Patois, Spanglish, English. You also discuss your collaborative process with Akosuwa, highlighting the ongoing dialogues as well as moments of agreements, disagreements, compromises that shaped the whole process. This comes across as a demanding, yet ultimately generative and rewarding endeavor. Could you both elaborate on this process? In particular, how did you navigate the novel's multilingual complexity and what did the collaboration look like in practice? Kevin, can we start with you?

[Kevin Meehan]

Sure. First of all, this is, I don't think this is the normal translator author relationship. It's, it's, you know, oftentimes the author is long since deceased, for starters. And then, you know, it's. I think it's very rare that you are working with someone who is a good friend and you have a long history with. And so it's a. It was, it was and remains a special relationship that Marie Kosoa and I have. And when we got into some of the, the tensions, I think it was crucial that we had that foundation of, you know, of, of collegial and, and just long term emotional respect to get through it. Anyways, one thing I could say is that when I, when I did the first version of the novel, all of the crail passages were rendered in Jamaican patois. So when you went translation, you speak about the target language. So it's written, there's the original language, and then the target language is the one you're aiming at with the translation. And so in the original, you have French and then you have Creole in italics. And it's, it's, you know, they're, they're two very different registers of language. And so in translating it, I was like, what am I going to do? And I, and I decided I'm going to learn how to write Jamaican patois and render those passages in patois. And while that was well received from various literary critics, the author did not like it at all. And she, she's going to tell you exactly why. And so we had some Rock Em Sock em robots conversations because she said, you know, get rid of this Jamaican patois. And I had like 15 rebuttals of why it was a good idea. And, you know, she just like, you know, returned service every single time and eventually persuaded me that the, that, that Guadalupe and Creole gets to be in the novel without any kind of mediation. And, you know, so that was one really important choice then, you know, with the. I'm going to wrap it up now, but I think one more thing to say is that with the linguistic complexity and how do we approach that as translators? Now, what we have is no mediation between Creole and English. However, in the passages that are Creole, oftentimes it's braided together. So every single syllable of Creole is there in the translation. But you might get an opening phrase in Creole and then the equivalent of it in English and then the rest of the phrase in Creole and the rest of that one in English, so that you almost have the person code switching in the sentence. And I don't know if that's, you know, there are better or worse ways to do it, but that's one that we came up with. And it seems satisfying to read the language braided together like that. But there, you know, there's, there's no mediation for the Creole. But at the same time you get a sense of what the Creole means at a, you know, at a very, at a very granular level. And I will end by saying those passages were the hardest. And I, I find that Kosoa was the most generous. Although we had to fight about, about what to do with Jamaican patois when it finally got down to the nitty gritty of getting these Creole passages rendered. I mean, she was the most generous interlocutor that anybody could ever have. And really, you know, that's why we're co translators.

[Akusua Fadhili Afriqa (Marie Letische)]

Yeah. Yes.

[Kevin Meehan]

Because we ended up co. Translating it.

[Akusua Fadhili Afriqa (Marie Letische)]

Yes. Thank you, Kevin. Yes. It was interesting and I think it was meant to happen this way because like Kevin said, we've known each other for so long, so we were able to sit and disagree respectfully. Right. And I was fighting because for me it was a matter of having a voice and that my voice be heard. And how are you going to tell me that you're switching my Creole into Jamaican, you know? And while you add it, why isn't it Trinidadian? Why isn't it like, I don't know any other English speaking island? You know what I mean? Because it's like I wanted to fight the idea that anything Caribbean was the same. If you're Caribbean, everybody's the same. And I think in creating this, this, this, this world, this, this part of the world, I don't think the colonizers thought very much of it. They're like, oh, these people, they are the same. They do the same thing, they eat the same thing. It is not the same. And I didn't want my, my Guadalupe and voice to be silenced once. And. And I'm like, you know, I had to learn English, I had to learn Spanish. How did I do it? Well, I went to school, but I also used dictionaries. So people need to understand that I exist. And if they are interested, they will grab a dictionary and learn Creole, you know, so that's why I. And I surprised myself. I didn't know I had this in me to actually stand up for myself and for my identity. I speak Creole from Guadeloupe. There are nine different Creoles in the world. Okay. And it's in the book. It has a place and it needs to stay. So people. And yeah, Kevin did a very good job in braiding, you know, the English. And he became very creative in trying, trying to make the reader understand, you know, things without necessarily just giving them the English one. So I think, I think that's one of the. It was hard, but it was. It's one of the best part of the novel to, to, to bring in the English reader into this world while allowing him or her to experience the Creole language. From Guadeloupe. Yeah.

[Arnab Dutta Roy]

Wonderful speaking.

[Kevin Meehan]

I want to add one thing. I want to add something, which is that over the course of giving a book talk or doing interviews like this one, we get this question all the time and One of them. We had a really interesting dialogue in the session about what's the relationship between the French and the Creole. And in the end we said we, you know, and what language is the. The original novel Moonla Coup written in? And while there's a. A vast majority of it is. Is literary French, the title is in Creole. The title of the book is in Creole, not in French. And then you have these passages in which it just slides effortlessly from one one language to the other and back. And so, I mean, really, I think Marie said it at one point, we have to stop referring to it as French and Guadalupe and Creole. And we need to speak about the language of the novel as Guadalupian and just say this is Guadalupean and it includes this mix of French and Creole. But the language of the novel now when we have a chance to speak to it is Guadalupe. The original is written in Guadalupe. And I love that.

[Akusua Fadhili Afriqa (Marie Letische)]

Yeah.

[Kevin Meehan]

And I did not realize about Jamaican and speak about Haitian. We need to do the same thing with Guadalupe.

[Akusua Fadhili Afriqa (Marie Letische)]

Yeah, yeah. And I just wanted to add really quick that I did not realize that the title was in Creole until I went to. I was invited to the Salon du Livre de Paris, which is like a big, top notch event. And then somebody picks up the book and says, but why is the title in Creole? I was like, I mean, it's me. You know, that's how I think. That's it just. It just manifested it this way. So I was like, wow, yeah. Why is it in Creole? Because that is me. The answer is Waterloo1.

[Arnab Dutta Roy]

Wonderful. Speaking of multiple navigating multiple cultural heritages. So my next question is based on this powerful passage that I found in the novel. Here it goes. For a long time, she had resisted her French heritage. She had fought against all the leases that haunt the French history books, all the Huns and the others, the Attilas and Dersvote. It took years and years of reading Cesaire, Glissant, Chamoisul, Confiant and Conde and Schwartz, Bartz and Barnaby and Penu for her to reach the point mentally where she was today. She was who she was, but she was also all of that. France. Guadeloupe, Senegal. Yes, absolutely, Senegal. This moment seems to underscore the deep entanglement between personal lives of characters and the broader transnational colonial and colonial histories that shape them. Could you speak to how the novel engages these layered historical inheritances and how they inform the characters and sense of identity, belonging and self understanding? Akosua, can we start with You.

[Akusua Fadhili Afriqa (Marie Letische)]

Not a good question. Very. I mean, all good, but very deep. Very deep. I think the mere fact that this novel is written in French says everything. You know, I'm a black person from Guadeloupe. I'm writing in French. I can't deny that. I can't deny that part of my identity. I wish I could say I have nothing to do with people, these French people and stuff, but this is the core of who I am, you know, I would not exist if that clash, that colonial clash didn't exist. You know what I mean? Didn't occur.

[New Books Network Host]

So.

[Akusua Fadhili Afriqa (Marie Letische)]

And then that French education that has watered my garden all these years make me who I am, right? So I have. I have. I have. I have no other choice, you know, no other choice but accept that part of my identity. Although Emory Cell of. Of my being are screaming for my African ancestry, my African back background. And I'm so glad because it's like you have this French frame, but then you have all of this exuberance of vibration, you know, coming out of myself saying, hey, hey, Africa. I mean, look, it's like the only thing that brings me one of the music that bring me joy is the right. Ever since I was a little girl, I can appre. I learn how to appreciate, you know, class what they call classical, European, classical music, but that vibrational music of Go K. Myself, myself understand it. They don't have to think it. They understand it. Right. And I think this is something that is happening more and more than what Nubians are realizing. Yeah. You know, our cells recognize that, you know, that, yes, we have this French thing, but it's like they fry. I don't know if you've ever drank coconut water.

[Arnab Dutta Roy]

You.

[Akusua Fadhili Afriqa (Marie Letische)]

You drink coconut water and it. It's like you.

[Arnab Dutta Roy]

You don't.

[Akusua Fadhili Afriqa (Marie Letische)]

You don't want to stop. It's like it sounds like more, more, more, more, more. And then it's like your body's just like opening a blossom flower. It's like, yeah, this is. It is who I am.

[Kevin Meehan]

This is what I need.

[Akusua Fadhili Afriqa (Marie Letische)]

So this is what it feels like to hear the vibration of the drum, you know. And, you know, right now everybody's talking about, yeah, everything is vibration. Everything is an energy. Well, myself, I've known that for centuries. You know what I mean? So, yes, I'm French, but I'm animated with a spirit of Africans descent. And we've been able to. To. To. To make it our own, a type of music and make our own language, you know. You know, gathering, you know, colonizers, languages and but putting the rhythm, the vibration of our African ancestry, our native ancestry, because we can't forget also that we are standing on native land. Before the colonizers came, there were people here. Yes. They silenced them. They genocided them, you know, but they are also. My grandmother was part Kalinago. So all of these. All of these cultures are part of who I am. And also in Guadalupe, you have an influx of. Of other culture, not just the European culture. You know, I cannot deny that there's a Indian heritage in. In. In Guadalupe. Otherwise, why am I eating a chicken curry, pork curry, all kinds of curry? And then, you know, to heal myself, I'm going to use my moringa, I'm going to use my. My neem. All of these beautiful influx of culture.

[Kevin Meehan]

Don't forget Madras.

[Akusua Fadhili Afriqa (Marie Letische)]

You know, that. That as well, which is also on the novel, the English one, that all came from the coast of Malabar. You know what I mean? This is who we are and everything. Infiltrating and finding their space, you know, like a Creole garden. So I'm not sure I'm answering the question, but there is so much passion in me in elevating and being grateful for who I am with all these intricacies, you know? Yeah, of course. You never. I don't think you ever catch me sitting somewhere and say, yes, I'm a French lady. I'm French. And this and this and that. You will catch glimpses of it. And the food that I serve you when I pump, when I invite you to my home, you know, you will see that in. In certain things that I say, the way my, you know, I frame my thoughts and stuff like that. But really coming and shining is my, you know, heritage from. From Africa and from natives. Native Guadalupe and. Or Carrie. Karen. Yes. Yes.

[Kevin Meehan]

Yeah. I have some things to add, and I would say in real life, you can see a glimpse of Frenchness in Marie Okosua when you look at her keychain. She might not still have the same keychain, but for years I would give her a hard time because she had an Eiffel Tower. An Eiffel Tower keychain.

[Akusua Fadhili Afriqa (Marie Letische)]

Yes. Yes. That's very symbolic, actually.

[Kevin Meehan]

Yeah. Anyway. Yeah, I know you could. There's. You can deconstruct the Eiffel Tower very quickly and make it. Make it mean other things than an icon of French. But anyway, I wanted to say

[Akusua Fadhili Afriqa (Marie Letische)]

that

[Kevin Meehan]

you do a great job of showing what I would. What I would refer to as interpolation of the subject and how the colonial regime is a cultural and political regime that shapes the mind of the colonial subject in particular ways. And then, you know, the entire rest of the book is a, is a pushback against that. But you certainly do show the impact. And I wanted to, if I, if. Can I read a passage, Arnab? Yeah, sure, yeah. Because it relates. And this is, this includes the passage that Marie summarized earlier. And this is in Frabo street chapter. And, and it goes like this. Toward the end of the street, this is an. A market, a market area in Puente Pitra, Frabo street, named after a former governor, French governor. Toward the end of the street, a range of stores popped up on both sides offering everything for sale. There were off the rack clothes straight from Paris or Italy. There were Italian shoe stores and hardware stores and most importantly, above all else, record stores where the men congregated like flies on honey. They came and listened to the latest hits and paid for them with their hard earned two week paychecks with. Without even flinching, the women carried the assault to the rest of the shops and in particular to the fabric stores. Buyers and sellers were worlds apart, but no one seemed to take, no one seemed to notice. Nevertheless, my little seven year old girl's eyes reflected images into my soul that would be permanently engraved in my memory. Interpolation of the subject, the images told me that each one had their place. In this Guadalupe of the 1960s, there was a place for Becket, a place for Lebanese or Syrians, a place for coolie Malabars, and a place for blacks. No one, it seemed, cared to change the order of things. It had been decided at some point by I don't know what greater authority that the role of black people was to ride in minibuses owned by Indians, to go and spend the money they had earned painfully working for the white Frenchman, or on Becket lands and. Or in stores of the Syrians and Lebanese. This is the way things were. And black folks were content with that. It would never occur to them to question their place in the world. As the adults of Mont BRNO Court said. After all, your real place is in the cemetery, n' est CE pas? No one was entitled to a place down here. That's incredible writing, but I think it encapsulates the, you know, the depiction of the impact that the order, the French colonial order of things has all the way down into the consciousness of the people.

[Arnab Dutta Roy]

Anyway, thank you so much. So I'll ask my concluding question and then after that we can go ahead and do a couple of passage each from you two.

[Akusua Fadhili Afriqa (Marie Letische)]

Right.

[Arnab Dutta Roy]

So here goes. If there is one idea or thought or lesson that you would like readers to remember or learn or take away from the experience of reading this novel. What would it be, Akusla?

[Akusua Fadhili Afriqa (Marie Letische)]

For me, it would be to tell the reader to be aware, to be conscious. Because we each create our own world based on. On what we focus on. If we focus on all our pain, you focus on all our hard time. We, we recreate it. We recreate it. We stay in it, we stay with it. It's like, you know, you have a scab, you know, a wound and a scab, and you keep on scratching it and it feels good, so you keep on scratching it so it doesn't heal right. But if you focus on the possibilities out there or you focus on what you want, you're going to keep on going to work what you want and create what you want. So that's what I want people to know. We create our own world. Basically. It's like we're God, you know, our mind is our one, you know, so learn how to, to control and use that mind. That's what I'd say. Thank you.

[Kevin Meehan]

I have two things. One, one is more. Is more, you know, pedestrian. But I think you. That I hope that when people will read this novel that they just savor the sensorium of the novel. And, and Marie is an extremely concrete writer and you know, you really do immerse in the world of the laku on all the different levels of senses. So, so really embrace and enjoy the sensorium of, of this novel. But on a. On a. On a higher message level. I think what I would say, I mean, Akosua said it perfectly, but I would say it a little differently, which is that you, you. You really do have to know yourself. But not just know yourself, you got to know all of yourself and, and, and it's a lifetime process of, of reflection and expression. But know yourself and know all of yourself. And I think that's what makes this such a powerful novel is that. Is that Camille really does know all of herself or is learning all of herself. And, and certainly the novel and the novelist have, have presented that, that, that complete picture. And so know yourself, but know all of yourself.

[Arnab Dutta Roy]

Thank you so much. So let's hear from you, maybe two passages each from you too. Acousia, would you like to start?

[Akusua Fadhili Afriqa (Marie Letische)]

Yes. I will start with a very short one that's just to honor my mom and it's in French, so I don't know. That's my first one. It's. That's the one where I, I let the reader in to the truth of my birth. I don't know if everybody catches it, but it's there. And it's just to honor my mother. The choice. The choice she had, she had to make. And she still talks about it. She talks about her pilgrimage and things she had to do. And then hearing the voice is telling her, hold on to that child. She's going to go far. She said it until today. Yes.

[Kevin Meehan]

Should I read that passage?

[Akusua Fadhili Afriqa (Marie Letische)]

Yeah, why not?

[Kevin Meehan]

Yeah, I'll read it. Because I found it English. So then you do. You do another one. For as long as I can remember, I always disliked Mont Bruno Court. Me began. I never felt like I was a part of that world. Yet wasn't I among the poorest and most deprived of this place? Was I not a product of it? Mother had me there. I was that stolen pleasure robbed from her innocent youth. And I stayed inside of her, clutching to the sides of her entrails, sole witness to her pain. The only result of that unhappy rainy day when her only mistake had been to ask for a little shelter from the rain. Please, monsieur, Dame, bonjour. Good evening, sir, Madam. She went on like that every day for at least two hours, continuing her story. Planted in her favorite chair, facing the orchard of tropical fruit trees. More than a hundred varieties that Jean Luc had planted along the lake that formed the border of their Chamberlain estate property. She told her story and Evelyn transcribed it page after page.

[Akusua Fadhili Afriqa (Marie Letische)]

So I'm going to read another one that is very close, and I think you already mentioned that part, but it's one of my favorite describing, like, I think I'm just going to stop there. It's the description of the lapu. And I like the fact that it is compared to a spider web, you know, that catches the spider, catches the prey. So this because the lapu had lots of different veins. Little street. Little, not street, because they, you know, nobody. No car could go through that, but. And then all of these would lead to more lives and more lives and more lives, you know. So, yes, I like it.

[Kevin Meehan]

I'm going to continue. We'll leave that passage as it was. But I'm going to continue in English after that. So I'll read the next paragraph that continues. The description of the laku. The neighborhood street was flanked by little houses, all of them topped with corrugated tin roofs shaped like an inverted V. The men and women inside were like headless crabs whose eyes could only gaze backward into their own life of poverty. And that roofing was all that separated them from the biting sun of Guadalupe. There they all simmered in a dirty river of their own sweat, reproducing with no hope of a better tomorrow. Tomorrow, God willing, they all said. And tomorrow always arrived, but without ever pleasing God. And so it was. And the children saw, and they heard and they understood and they accepted. And that was the meaning of life, all of it like a toothless mouth opening up to reveal a few decayed stumps. That is how the Laku appeared to me, with all its houses in teeming poverty.

[Arnab Dutta Roy]

Thank you. That was truly wonderful. This was such an amazing conversation. Thank you so much for your time. I loved and really enjoyed the novel and I am 100% sure that our audience will too. So I urge our our listeners to please check out this fantastic novel. Many thanks again.

[Kevin Meehan]

Thanks Arnab. It's always great to always great to see you and talk to you. Thank you.

[Akusua Fadhili Afriqa (Marie Letische)]

That was really nice.

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