La mulâtresse Solitude

by André Schwarz-Bart

De mère africaine — arrachée à son village de brousse par les trafiquants d'esclaves —, et de père inconnu — quelque marin du bateau négrier voguant vers la Guadeloupe —, elle n'est ni noire ni blanche, et même ses yeux sont de nuance différente. Enfant, on la surnommera « Deux-âmes ». Et finalement c'est sous le nom de « Solitude » qu'elle vivra à la Guadeloupe dans les familles de Blancs qui l'ont achetée, puis parmi les troupes de Noirs révoltés qu'elle rejoindra à grand peine dans leurs refuges des forêts de la Soufrière.
L'histoire se passe d'environ 1760 à 1802. L'abolition de l'esclavage décrétée par la Convention n'aura duré que le temps d'un rêve. Et Solitude, près de l'Africain Maïmouni qu'elle a découvert dans la forêt et dont elle partage la vie, a senti en elle-même « battre un cœur de négresse ». C'est elle, enceinte et soutenue par ses compagnons, qui anime le dernier combat. Capturée, elle est pendue après avoir donné naissance à son enfant.
Tel fut le destin tragique d'un personnage bien réel, sous les couleurs de la légende. L'auteur du Dernier des Justes en a rendu perceptibles « le bruit et la fureur » à travers la musique et la tendresse.

Ce livre est le premier d'un cycle qui se déroule de 1760 à nos jours. Le volume précédent, Un plat de porc aux bananes vertes, publié sous la signature d'André et Simone Schwarz-Bart, en constituait le prélude.

Genres: Fiction, France, French Literature, School, Historical Fiction

143 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

André Schwarz-Bart (May 28, 1928, Metz, Moselle - September 30, 2006, Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe) was a French novelist of Polish-Jewish origins.

Schwarz-Bart is best known for his novel The Last of the Just (originally published as Le Dernier des justes). The book, which traces the story of a Jewish family from the time of the Crusades to the gas chambers of Auschwitz, earned Schwarz-Bart the Prix Goncourt in 1959. He won the Jerusalem Prize in 1967.

Schwarz-Bart's parents moved to France in 1924, a few years before he was born. In 1941, they were deported to Auschwitz. Soon after, Schwarz-Bart, still a young teen, joined the Resistance, despite the fact that his first language was Yiddish, and he could barely speak French. It was his experiences as a Jew during the war that later prompted him to write his major work, chronicling Jewish history through the eyes of a wounded survivor.

Schwarz-Bart died of a complications after heart surgery in 2006. He had spent his final years in Guadeloupe, with his wife, the novelist Simone Schwarz-Bart, whose parents were natives of the island. The two co-wrote the book Pork and Green Bananas (1967). It is also suggested that his wife collaborated with him on A Woman Named Solitude.

Their son, Jacques Schwarz-Bart, is a noted jazz saxophonist.

Reviews

[Vince Will Iam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel is based on the true story of a mixed-race female slave who came to join the 1802 slave revolt following the reinstitution of slavery by Napoleon in the French-owned island of Guadeloupe, only eight years after it was proclaimed abolished.

The mulatto Solitude was born of an African slave mother who was raped by a drunken mariner on their way to the colonies -- a custom known as "la pariade" according to which one month before reaching port, the mariners used to pounce on "black bellies freshly washed down with seawater".

It is a heartbreaking story of displacement, disorientation and madness but also one of resilience and pride as Solitude becomes a legend among the slaves of Guadeloupe and a symbol of their rebellious spirit.

[Kendalyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was so incredibly lush and lyrical. It read like a fairy-tale complicated by it being a story about slavery. The stories of Solitude and her mother were drawn so well and as such were incredibly compelling. This books concern with identity is particularly compelling and the different kinds of identities. For class we considered the idea of "filiative" versus "affiliative" identity as outlined by the scholar Edward Said and my awareness of this scholarly framework shifted the way I read the text and my considerations about racial, political, and cultural identities versus the identities shaped by the personal and intimate. I think this book can open broad pathways for dialogue around complicated issues that result because of a complicated past.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

I need to find this in French. You know when you read beauty like this in translation that the original will be out of this world.
Schwarz-Bart, an orphan of the Shoah, creates, seemingly through a act of pure imagination and art, the story of another crime against humanity--the African diaspora. And because Schwarz-Bart would never dream of pretending to own this particular story, he writes as if in a dream. His description is almost always evocative and rarely slows down to provide concrete detail. His rapid pace allows brief glimpses of pain, pride, and the debilitating questions created by the loss of a homeland, a racial identity, and a family. A Woman Named Solitude will be one I'll come back to again and again.

[Tammy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to honestly say I wanted to put this down several times. I forced myself to finish. The book seemed a bit disjointed. I found myself re-reading pages in attempts to connect dots.

[Katrina Van Grouw · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lyrical and mysterious writing, but the story didn’t captivate me. It did make me consider the atrocity of slavery though.

[Lisa James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Given to me by a friend who was going to throw it out because the front cover was gone, I read the back & I was fascinated. The story of Solitude starts with her mother, who was captured & sold into slavery on the coast of Africa back in the 1700's. She was raped on the ship by the sailors, and gave birth to Solitude on the island of Guadalupe, where the remainder of the story takes place, & ends with the slave uprisings & the massacres on that island, ending with her execution the day after Solitude herself gives birth. The legend of Solitude is a captivating, haunting, & powerful story that will stick in my head for a while to come....

[Francesco · Rating 5 out of 5]

La “mulatta” del titolo è la figlia dell'africana Bayangumay, deportata come schiava dai francesi. La mulatta dagli occhi chiari nacque in schiavitù a Guadalupa (Antille francesi), e fu gradualmente trascinata sull’orlo della follia dai maltrattamenti, dall’essere ripetutamente venduta come un oggetto, anche per via della sua bellezza, fino a diventare una “zombi”. Ma fra gli indiscussi meriti dell’autore, il pluripremiato romanziere André Schwarz-Bart, ebreo, partigiano, figlio di deportati ad Auschwitz, non c’è quello di aver inventato la protagonista, che è esistita davvero. Continua: https://francescotroccoli.it/la-mulatta/

[Melanie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Made it 3/4 through waiting to become engaged by the characters & plot but had to put it down in frustration. I will say that there are some beautifully poetic passages in there.

[Louiza · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Nothing is a spoiler). Beautifully written and haunting, A Woman Named Solitude takes us back to the 18th century during the French slave trade. The story begins with Bayangumay, a young girl, in an unnamed African village where she marries an old man she was betrothed to by her father at birth. Within a few days after the consummation of the marriage, Frenchmen arrive, kill her husband and most villagers. The rest are chained and moved to slave ships.

In the slave ships, the women suffer recurrent rapes by the Frenchmen.
Bayangumay gives birth to a mixed race girl, Rosalie. The focus of the novel is the story of this girl. Her mother escapes with another Black man and Rosalie stays behind. Her whiter skin due to her mixed race causes a conflict of identity as neither race accepts her fully—for the French she is a slave and for the Black people she is "yellow skin, a potential betrayer."

Rosalie renames herself Solitude and becomes fully immersed in her Black ancestry that flows from an inner almost mystical power she seems to possess. She ends up leading her people to fight against the French for their freedom or to die with their heads high. She was captured and executed on November 29, 1802.
The novel blends historical facts with mythical elements to capture the soul of the ancient oral traditions and legends of African cultures. The often convoluted writing style is meant to convey to the readers the emotional and psychological disorientation experienced by the enslaved people in the slave ships and in the French colony of the island of Guadeloupe where they were transported.

It is based on the true story of Solitude though her history is now a legend, and the facts of her involvement and leadership are largely unknown. The novel was published in French in 1972, and in the English translation in 1973. The author Andre Schwarz-Bart comes from a Polish-Jewish family who lived in France since 1923. He lost all his family in 1941 at the concentration camps. Thus, in this novel he expresses a deeper universal and personal pain for the atrocities of humanity.

(Helpful Historical Facts: France abolished slavery in 1794. Napoleon reinstated slavery in 1802).

[Luca Frasca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ancorché ispirato ad una vicenda reale, la cui protagonista è passata alla storia come la mulatta Solitude di Guadalupe, il romanzo ne trasfigura l'esistenza con una scrittura tutt'affatto originale che alterna il dato storico ad una narrazione onirica, evocativa e, in alcuni passaggi, tocca vette poetiche.
Ho letto il libro in francese, perché non sono riuscito a trovare l'edizione italiana, e forse ciò ha contribuito a restituirmi la musicalità di certi passaggi e la suggestione di un racconto impregnato di realismo magico.
La pazzia della protagonista, frutto delle malversazioni e della violenza subita fin dalla tenera età, sfuma sempre in una sorta di prospettiva magica e surreale: frequenti i riferimenti agli occhi di Solitude, di colore diverso l'uno dall'altro, tanto da meritarle l'appellativo di due-anime, ma soprattutto costante il richiamo al suo sguardo, apparentemente cieco ad una realtà aberrante, ma aperto su un mondo "altro", un mondo di ombre e fantasmi cha la accompagnano per tutto il corso della sua sfortunata esistenza.
Una lettura molto particolare, assai insolita per toni e stile, che merita assolutamente qualche ora del nostro tempo.

[Adam Cherson]

As a group of insurgent ex-slaves tries to survive in the forest of Guadeloupe circa 1798 one Dahomeyan woman asks her comrades around the campfire: "Sometimes I wonder why God created the white man, and it plagues me, here in my big head..." To which a man of unknown origins replies: "Dear woman, don't blame God for creating the tiger...thank him for not giving him wings..." The question of why evil exists in the world is not new, but to watch and hear how a multi-cultural group of African former slaves attempts to deal with the suffering inflicted by evil makes this novel unique in my experience. Madness, detachment, violence, compliance, religion, and music are all part of the collective response. As I read, I heard reverberations of the Jewish partisan experience in the forests of Belarus during the 20th century genocide of European Jews, and when I later learned that Schwarz-Bart was himself a Polish Jew, it all made sense. His own people's experiences, as well as his marriage to a Guadeloupean woman, gave him the emotional insight needed to write such a story convincingly and movingly.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wide-ranging history of slavery from the African perspective — the story begins in Africa, follows the capture and Middle Passage of the heroine's mother and arrives at the life and times of Solitude. It is told in mythic-fablistic style that gives the sense of oral tales told generation to generation. The tales, as such tales tend to do, leave gaps and unfold with ambiguities and contradictions among those who remember the events or were told them from different perspectives. It is not so much the heroic story of an individual as much as the history of a people and a person who became a symbol of their rebellion. At once beautiful in its literary telling and horrifying in the reality it reveals, this story transports us powerfully into a form of empathy with the enslaved and anger with the institution of slavery. Nothing is romanticized.

[UlysseRoche InOneLine · Rating 5 out of 5]

The identity of an oppressed people holds to its word, its history follows this word drifting away. The name of Solitude is a way to transfigure this leeway, transfigure it in an uprising song she did not even mutter. Instead, her whole life drew the shape of this helpless symbol.

L'identité d'un peuple opprimé tient à sa parole, son histoire suit la dérive de cette parole. Il y a dans ce nom de Solitude la transfiguration de cette dérive, transfiguration dans un chant de révolte qu'elle n'a pas prononcé de ses lèvres, mais dont toute sa vie dessine le signe impuissant.

[Elise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great historical fiction with a twist of magic realism, A Woman Named Solitude is a delicious read for anyone who needs to be transported to a place long ago and far away. This one takes place in the 1700s first in West Africa then takes us to the island of Guadeloupe. It is based on the true story of Solitude, a woman who was prepared to die for her freedom from slavery, a compelling and beautifully told tale. I highly recommend it.

[Raha · Rating 3 out of 5]

I definitely have mixed feelings with regards to this book. It's vivid and so well written, you feel you are there, you feel the magic, you feel everything, so for these reasons, I think it's a great write. However, somehow I felt some parts just didn't link right.. so somehow I left feeling dissatisfied...

[Fany · Rating 2 out of 5]

Je ne peux dire que je n'ai pas aimé ce livre. Après tout on suite une biographie romancé d'une femme qui a réellement existé sous l'esclavage et sa vie bien que terrible a révélé un espoir saisissant et vivifiant pour son peuple. Malgré tout le style d'écriture fantaisiste de l'auteur ne m'a pas touché comme je l'aurais voulu.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of a woman born into slavery on the island of Guadeloupe. Her mother was stolen from the African continent and she was conceived when her mother was raped on the voyage to the island. The cruelty of slavery and the suffering of slaves. During the French Revolution the slaves rebelled and the woman was eventually executed. Sad and depressing.

[Alain · Rating 3 out of 5]

l'enfance puis l'esclavage et la révolte vécue avec les mots de la mulâtresse Solitude, figure historique de la Guadeloupe. Le principal intérêt, sont les mots a elle dans sa culture, dans ce qui la constitue

[Graziella (AuxPetitsBonheurs) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un témoignage important, mais un découpage des chapitres peu cohérent.

[Camille · Rating 2 out of 5]

Décousu, parfois incompréhensible mais poétique

[Emma Ghiz]

“All the stories, all the legends and fireside tales about Solitude of Guadeloupe ends with that laugh, which some likened of a song.”

This was beautifully haunting, yet hopeful.

[PATRICE PRIVAT · Rating 4 out of 5]

Une histoire terrible sur une période folle. Envoutant.

[Senne · Rating 3 out of 5]

simultaneously humanizing and dehumanizing, but above all confusing.

[Adhém · Rating 4 out of 5]

Très intéressant

[Mimie Be · Rating 3 out of 5]

J’ai eu beaucoup de mal à rentrer dedans… mais vraiment beaucoup de mal jusqu’au bout.
Je crois que l’écriture ne me convient pas, même si je comprends l’importance du texte.

[FM · Rating 3 out of 5]

very poetic...was a tedious read for me...

[steds · Rating 4 out of 5]

trauma novel/colonial/slave exploration. vivid. great.