Afropean

by Alice Endamne, Cheryl Toman

There are few works of literature that capture the day-to-day life of a black family in France quite like Alice Endamne’s Afropean. Published originally in French as C’est demain qu’on s’fait la malle in 2008, Endamne’s first novel opens with the start of the school year in fall 1989 and culminates with the end of the summer in 1990. The reader follows the life of its teen protagonist, Laetitia Obame, and those of her friends, family, teachers and acquaintances, with particular attention paid to her skinhead-turned-boyfriend, Stéphane Pellerin. Endamne’s fictional characters and their world are affected by very real historical events of the the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the release in February 1990 of South African anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela after 27 years of imprisonment, and the desecration of the Carpentras Jewish cemetery in France in May 1990—all happenings that received worldwide media coverage. Cheryl Toman, Case Western Reserve University

194 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 7, 2015

About the author

Alice Endamne is an "Afropean" author who lives in California. A former Fulbright fellow, she graduated from the University of Paris.

Alice writes multicultural novels on identity and relationships, as well as children's books.

She is the author of three novels in French: C'est demain qu'on s'fait la malle (Jets d'Encre, 2008), Garcons et filles (Jets d'Encre, 2010), as well as Mal Acquise (CreateSpace, 2015) written under the pen name A. Nyin. She is also the writer behind the Clever Ashley series.

Reviews

[Sue Kozlowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book as part of my quest to read a book written by an author from each country in the world. The parents of the author of this book were born in Gabon. The author lived in Gabon from age 6 to age 12.

This is a story of a family living in Southern France in the early 1990's. The parents had immigrated from Gabon, France and they now had a teenage daughter and son. The daughter, Laetitia, struggles with her sense of identity. She questions whether she is African or European.

I had a hard time accepting how realistic this story was. Laetitia talks about a skin-head named Stephane at her school. He and his friends are known for hating blacks and harassing them. Laetitia and Stephane are assigned to work on a school project together. Soon Laetitia has a crush on him and they begin dating. Stephane starts growing his hair out and tells her that he is no longer a skinhead. I have a hard time believing that someone with that much hatred could change just like that.