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Martin Munro and Eliana Vagalau eds., "Jean-Claude Charles: A Reader's Guide" (Liverpool UP, 2022)
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New Books Network Intro Voice
sCI welcome to the New Books Network
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Gina Stam
welcome to the New Books Network. I'm your host, Gina Stam, Associate professor of French at the University of Alabama. My guest, Dr. Eliana Vagelow, is co editor with Martin Monroe of Jean Claude A Reader's Guide, out in 2022 from Liverpool University Press. Dr. Vagelow is Associate professor and Director of the French Program at Loyola University Chicago. Her research on Francophone Caribbean literature and contemporary philosophy focuses on the relationship between aesthetics and politics, as well as on questions of transnationalism, diaspora and sexuality. In addition to editing and contributing to this volume, she has published articles on the works of authors such as Maryse Conde and James Noel, as well as Jean Claude Charles. As a founding member of the collectif Jean Claude Charles, she dedicated much of her work to making visible the work of this fundamental Haitian author. And she has published translations of literary and philosophical texts by teaching a course on Black Paris, her extensive collaborations with contemporary black artists and writers living in France today, as well as serving as co organizer of the Black Europe Symposium in 2023 at Loyol University, Chicago, she has developed a secondary research interest in the city of Paris as a chief site of Black transnational encounters. Dr. Vagalau, thank you for being with us today.
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Dr. Eliana Vagelow
Thank you very much, Dr. Stamp, for your invitation. I'm delighted to be here.
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Gina Stam
So to start out, since Jean Claude Charles is unfortunately not as well known a figure as he should be and this book serves as a companion to his work, can you tell our listeners who he was as well as the scope of his writing?
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Dr. Eliana Vagelow
Sure. And yes, this is part of. This has been part of my. An intricate part of my work as trying to bring forth his work and make it visible again. So Charles was born in Bordeaux prince in 1949, and he first left Haiti for Mexico for a short period, then moved to France, studied in Strasbourg and eventually spent most of his life between New York and Paris. In Paris he worked as a contributor to Le Monde and a lot of those chronicles have been gathered posthumously in the volume Basket. He was contributing a column titled Le Monton Visa and he began writing. His first publication was in 1972, negociation, which is a first volume of poetry. But he has published poems, essays, novels, and very often those genres become intertwined within the same work. So publications until the early 2000s. He passed away in 2008. And so the work covers and is not only very varied stylistically and genre wise, but also thematically. Some of it speaks to American U.S. american reality, some of it speaks to Haiti and Haitian American relations, some of it speaks to France particularly. All of it speaks to questions of global citizenship and racism and migration and definitely some of the central themes that cross his entire work. So yeah, in sum, this would be a very quick portrait of a man who did lots of things and I forgot to mention, for example, the documentaries he made in the United States in refugee camps and radio shows for France Couture. So there's lots and lots to discover and uncover.
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Gina Stam
And how would you say that he fits into the wider landscape of Haitian literature and of Francophone literature more broadly.
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Dr. Eliana Vagelow
This is a very, very vast question, and I think first of the question of Francophone literature, because he definitely writes mainly in French, but that doesn't mean that we have access to everything, because he very masterfully combines French and English and Spanish and Creole, and without apologies. And so already linguistically, it's a difficult positioning within Francophone literature. There's also the fact that he was a great admirer of American authors, of black American authors. And so the style is more similar to an American style, then fitted neatly, somehow into a French tradition. And what concerns Haiti, he marks a definitive break from previous generations, generations of Jacques Stephen, Alexis, of Jacques Romain, of even Davartiche Franc Etienne and so on. And this is both thematic and stylistic. Thematically, his work focuses a lot more on the individual, whereas previous concerns were with the collective. And this is reflected in his autobiographical style, in this focus on the individual body. And so in that sense, it's a turn that has been assumed, however, by writers after him, Danila Ferrier most notably, probably, but lead writers of the younger generation. So there is a switch there. And then stylistically, this kind of rapid style. The fact that I was mentioning that he was a journalist, it's not a random mention, because there is something journalistic about it, the sort of syncopation, incessant ruptures in style, all of this that speak to also a new reality. And that reality is that of his infamous or famous in Horace Neros, which also moves away from sort of more classical perspectives on exile. Right. The question of return almost disappears. Right. It's both embracing errantry and admitting to its roots. But the question is no longer that of the return to the homeland. It has shifted. And so the fact also, it matters very much that he was at the time of publication of Manhattan Blues, for example, that he was publishing in Paris and had developed quite a network in Paris, and so that he is praised by Marguerite Duras, for example. There is an always uncomfortable positioning of Charles in terms of any literary tradition. There's always a slight difference, be it to a Haitian tradition, be it to an American tradition, be it to a French tradition. But we can talk more about his philosophy. But this, I think, is very well reflected in all of his writing and
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Gina Stam
what in particular led to the creation of this volume.
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Dr. Eliana Vagelow
This volume has actually a long and joyous history. It's all connected, actually, to the Winthrop King Institute that Martin Monroe, my co editor, has directed for many years now, in 2015, I had just begun reading Jean Claude Charles. And at the time, the books, I remember the first book I received came from a library in Germany, because the books were out of print and they didn't exist anymore. So I fully expected to go to this conference at Winthrop King without anyone knowing who he was or no discussions around it. But to my surprise, Rodney St. Eloise, who is the editor and director of Memoires d', Encier, was president of the conference. And he had been thinking about the same issue, the question that there was a sort of abrupt disappearance of the work and of any discussion around this work. And so he was in the process of acquiring the rights at the time in order to republish it and make it available again. And so we decided that it was necessary to accompany this republishing through various activities, colloquia and presentations and so on, because there was also no critical apparatus, or there are a few reviews that appeared when the books first came out. And Jean Jean Assan had written a little bit about him. At the time, I knew that Michael Dasch Jaldash was teaching some of his novels on copies, like Xerox copies, because they didn't exist. So with Martin Monroe and Rodney Santalva, we organized this colloquium in 2018. And the idea was to begin creating some kind of critical apparatus around the work. But because there was nothing, we asked the participants only to think of themes, not to write full fledged papers. And so we had small group discussions about various recurrent themes in his work, and afterwards asked some of the participants to contribute to the volume. So that was the sort of long road that led to 2022.
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Gina Stam
And so you brought up that there are this set of broad, overarching themes that were part of the genesis of the volume. Could you tell us what some of the major themes are that are addressed here and also why you believe his work is particularly relevant today?
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Dr. Eliana Vagelow
Yes. So one of the refrains of that conference, something that everyone noticed and it kept returning, was just how contemporary his writing was or felt in the sense that, of course, racism, migration, these are not a fix in time. But the way he has approached them felt like it was written today. So it felt urgent to reintroduce this discourse into the general discourse about these themes. So, yes, racism is one of his major preoccupations, migration. And he has written extensively, you know, about the boat people and so on. The question of music and writing, or musicality of writing, this was on Mel, who was very passionate about jazz and blues and wrote extensively about them, but also with them in the sense that. And when one of. One of our contributors goes deeply into this topic of what it means to say that a text is musical, and whether or not critics are sometimes lazy
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Gina Stam
about
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Dr. Eliana Vagelow
thinking about what that means. And generally injustice was perhaps his only commitment to people who are not allowed to cross borders, who are engaged, who are constrained, and evidently reflects a lot of his own journey. So these are all addressed from different angles and. And with different voices throughout the volume.
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Gina Stam
So could you tell us a bit about how you chose to structure the guide both in terms of content and the genre of the individual pieces, because they aren't all academic papers and maybe highlight some of the individual contributions?
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Dr. Eliana Vagelow
Sure. Yes, we truly wanted. And the Colloquium was organized in the same way. We truly wanted to provide new readers with beginnings of thoughts and how to think about this work. But we also wanted to pay an homage to a person and to really think of this work as a whole and indivisible from a life. Actually, the colloquium took place 10 years after his passing, so it was also a celebration. And so that's why we decided to have three parts. The first, I believe three articles are sort of mise en context, larger essays about the underlying themes and concepts in his work. A second part highlights contributions that are more specific to specific books, whether it be the essays or poetry or the novels. And the third part are contributions from peers and from family and from fellow writers. So I was very, very glad to have a contribution from Edvard Juvel Charles, who is his daughter, along with his former partner, who is also an editor and therefore someone who knew both the man and the work very well. Contribution from Danila Ferrier, who has famously said he had learned to write from Jean Clachal. So it seemed important to have that. But also because what we hoped with this volume was to open the discussion to a younger generation. We invited, for example, Martin Fidele, who is a young Haitian author who lives in Montreal, who was not necessarily familiar with the work previously, but we wanted those sort of new reactions and new involvement to be included. Kathleen Mars also has contributed a beautiful testimony to how she has received the work and the ways in which Jean Claudia Charles Reilig has made her think of Excel differently and maybe even accept it. And another not minor. No, it's not minor at all. But another part about which I was particularly content was a photo essay by Patrick Bach, who had traveled part of the United States alongside Jean Claudia Charles on a journalistic assignment. And so it is his testimony of that trip and along with some beautiful photos. So, yes, we wanted to accompany new readers and hope to instigate them to reading more and thinking more. And yes, really relying on this work to create its just space in literary history.
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Gina Stam
So, turning to your own contribution in this volume, in your essay, as well as in your earlier writing, Jean Claude Chau, you highlight the concept of which you've already brought up today. So can you tell us a bit about what this concept represents and how it's constructed? And in particular, in your essay, you talk about its relationship to the Port de Mitton or to Derrida.
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Dr. Eliana Vagelow
Yes, it is a concept. And you had asked earlier about themes that come up. I mean, the volume is. You can't really escape en racinerance once you start reading Jean Claudia. But it's a concept that was developed, only developed, I should say, late in the early 2000s in an essay. It appears a first time in le Cornoir in 1980, and it's always there, underlying everything. But it wasn't really explained in any way until much later. So Charles defines it in relationship to the Potomitan, right? And the pothommitant, which is the central column of a Vodou temple, is for him the act of writing very clearly, very solidly. But this hen racinerance is obviously an oxymoron. It takes the action of. Taken root and associates it with errans. Errantry wondering, but errantry specifically, because errantry has this dual meaning of not only wandering, but perhaps taking the wrong. The wrong street or maybe making mistakes and taking that chance. So he relied heavily on. This was a notion that he adopted, as opposed to, say, migrant or exile writing or cosmopolitan writing or. And he does state at one point that none of them sufficed. It does have. He acknowledges, Charlotte acknowledges a relationship to the. But very quickly severs the connection, that same connection, saying that destinerance is also a sort of mauvalise, a word where there is no tension, right? There is no tension in this. And the tension seems very, very important, productive for him. And so it is a very distinct way of looking at this new problem of global citizenry, both acknowledging the history and a memory of a nation and a people, but attempting to do something with the reality of being constantly on the move, which was his and many others.
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Gina Stam
And how do you see this translating stylistically in Charles writing?
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Dr. Eliana Vagelow
I'd mentioned the autobiographical slant before, so I think that is probably the most immediate and obvious way. There is this concentration on the body, and it really Feels as though Jean Claude Charlotte put his. Really, his body on the line. Right. And he speaks a lot about the very close, immediate relationship between the body and the writing. Right. Things like my, you know, I lose weight as my book grows. Right. So that's a very physical. It's a very physical activity. And there's, you know, this sort of small. Between the narrator, the protagonist, the author of constant play on those. On those relationships. Then there's certainly his humor and particularly irony. Jean Claude Charla is extremely funny in a very cutting way and in a very. Yes, in a very enlightening way, I should say. And so those are a couple of his approaches to. To this. There's clearly the confusion of languages, this constant shift between idioms, also between registers. So in any given novel, there could be a poem in the middle and a short essay a few pages later. We have, you know, really like to include things like signage and publicity. We have lots of art references, lots of musical references. So writing becomes this sort of place for everything, but we have to be ready to. To take it in and to understand and make the connections.
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Gina Stam
Another theme that comes up a lot, but is also very fraught in Charles's writing is that of identity. So could you tell us a bit about how Charles discusses his own identity or even his relationship to the concept of identity?
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Dr. Eliana Vagelow
Yes. He does not like the concept of identity at all and even has a famous formula. And speaking of those who regulate identities, as, you know, he calls the identity cops. And these are usually, you know, very stable structures like the police or immigration officers or, you know, governmental structures and so on. But clearly those who think identity as well. Um, and so the. The only way he accepted to be identified was a writer, and not a francophone writer, not a Haitian writer, not a black writer, but a writer. Foucault. And. And this is a very courageous stance at the time when a writer of. Of his, you know, a Haitian writer coming to publish in Paris was expected to perform very specific. A very specific role. And so this sort of freedom to be a Haitian writer who publishes in Paris but publishes books about New York is very brave and almost anti. Ambitious. There is a question of a true dedication to his topics and what he had to say with some measure of disregard for whether or not it would work within the given milieu and how it would be received.
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Gina Stam
So overall, how do you hope that readers will use this volume?
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Dr. Eliana Vagelow
I really hope it's a companion. The biggest hope is that more people read Chong to Chan. That is the main impetus behind it. And I would really hope that we can find a way back to replacing him in the larger landscape of Haitian writing, of Francophone writing. I had heard a few years ago, Nadia Ya Lakusikidi, in a lecture she was giving, place his work between that of Baldwin and Ta Nehisi Coates. And I thought that was a very, very astute way of looking at it. And so I think it's important that we re engage with these themes from a different perspective that really hasn't been heard or really fleshed out. And it can give us a much more complex, interesting view, especially when it comes to how we think about race. And so I would hope that it can again give a few directions on how to think with it. But mostly it's meant to be to insight. To insight readers to go rediscover this author.
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Gina Stam
And as a follow up to that, where would you recommend that listeners start with Jean Claudia Chart, if they have not previously had the pleasure of reading him?
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Dr. Eliana Vagelow
This is a recurring question, and I always say the same thing. Manhattan Blues, because it's. Manhattan Blues is perhaps the most accessible, although incredibly layered. And it can also sort of. Yeah. And it can provide an initiation to a style that can become. And you know, the earlier work is a lot more experimental and perhaps more difficult to. Yeah. To enter into. Or the essays like the Cornoir and so on. But yeah, the poetry is also a really good way to begin. Negotiation is wonderful. Free is absolutely amazing thing. But yes, I would say Manhattan Blues. And if you like Manhattan Blues, continue with Ferdinand Je Sus Apari because they are meant to work together. They were supposed to be part of a trilogy that the third part never saw the light. Because I think they do provide a good way to. To enter into a very complex universe. Great.
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Gina Stam
And as we come to the end of our time together, are there any other projects by the collective Jean Claude Charles that you would like to inform listeners about or any individual future or forthcoming projects they may be interested in?
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Dr. Eliana Vagelow
There are a couple of translations because language, as I have found even with this volume, is a true, very real book barrier. And so one of the things we hope to do is to actually have this volume translated into French or retranslated into French, because a lot of it's. I had given. We had given a lot of talks and so on in France and there is a problem with the work existing only in French and then the volume being in English. So this is one of the projects in development. There are a couple of translations of his work. I know one of the members of the collective is working on Le Cornoir. And I had completed at one point the translation of Manhattan Blues. I know there are others. And so I'm hoping that slowly the work will also be translated and not just into English, but hopefully into Spanish, for example, Creole. And I'm currently interested in looking into the relationship between Charles and Chester Himes. Chester Himes was his most definite inspiration and slight obsession. So I'm trying to kind of unpack where that came from. Because if we mention, what's interesting to me is that if we mention his affinity with Baldwin, Baldwin is not the one really of that generation. It was Chester Himes that made an impact on him. And interestingly, Chester Himes has also been kind of the, the one who was forgotten of that generation, very much like Charles. So hopefully that will come out in some form, a chapter or something else. But yeah, and then I know that, you know, members of the collectif and others, I know that there's a young scholar, Stephane Santill, who has been working on Jean Claudian for a while and he's writing a dissertation, currently written a master's thesis on him. So in any way we can sort of support any of these initiatives, we're very happy to do so.
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Gina Stam
Wonderful. So for the listeners, my guest again has been Dr. Eliana Vagalaou and the book is Jean Claudia A Reader's Guide. Thank you very much.
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Dr. Eliana Vagelow
Thank you very much, Gina.
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