June 20, 2022
The Antillean people of Guadaloupe take center stage in Bulle’s promising debut. In alternating chapters beginning in the 1940s, three biracial adult siblings relate their family’s story to a member of the younger generation against the backdrop of their homeland’s convoluted history. Antoine Ezechiel, the fiercely independent eldest daughter, has a shrewd business sense. Lucinde is an expert seamstress who aspires to climb into the middle class and beyond. Petit-Frere, the youngest, has been robbed by circumstance of the education he craves. After their mother dies, Antoine, at 16, leaves her poor village for Pointe-a-Pitre, where she moves in with a cousin and finds work before traveling around the Caribbean. Guadaloupe can’t hold the siblings for long, and each of them winds up in Paris by the 1960s: Antoine, drawn by business opportunities; Lucinde, by fashion and celebrity; and Petit-Frere, fresh from an army post in Germany, by the Sorbonne and left-wing activism. Though the story tends to ramble, there is much conflict and loss as fights for workers’ rights and self-determination heat up, and the many characters remain distinct and memorable thanks to Grawemeyer’s finely tuned translation. This ambitious work heralds a welcome new voice.