The Dancing Other

Suzanne Dracius

Translated by Nancy Naomi Carlson, Catherine Maigret Kellogg

 

6 x 9 inches, 256pp. October 2018

ISBN : 9780857424792

Rs  799.00 (HB)
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The Dancing Other takes readers to France and Martinique to reveal the struggles of people who belong both places, but never quite feel at home in either. Suzanne Dracius tells the story of Rehvana, a woman who feels she is too black to fit in when living in mainland France, yet at the same time not dark-skinned enough to feel truly accepted in the Caribbean. Her sense of dislocation manifests itself at first in a turn to a mythical idea of Mother Africa; later, she moves to Martinique with a new boyfriend and thinks she may have finally found her place—but instead she is soon pregnant, isolated and lonely. Soon her only reliable companion is her neighbor, Ma Cidalise, who regales her in Creole with supernatural tales of wizards. Rehvana, meanwhile, watches her dream of belonging fade, as she continues to refuse to accept her multicultural heritage.

Novelist and playwright Suzanne Dracius published her first collection of poems, Exquise déréliction métisse, in 2008 and won the Prix Fetkann. In 2010, she won a Prix de la Société des Poètes Français (Prize of the Society of the French Poets) for her body of work.

 

Nancy Naomi Carlson is a winner of grants from the NEA, Maryland Arts Council and the Arts & Humanities Council of Montgomery County. Author of three award-winning non-translated titles, she is also the author of Stone Lyre: Poems of René Char (2010).

Catherine Maigret Kellogg

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Fiction