To participate, please contact Antoine Aupetit at a.aupetit@cracalsace.com or by phone at 03 89 08 82 59.

Throughout the summer, we organized a series of collective readings of works by Caribbean writers in the CRAC Alsace garden. Books went from hand to hand, voices overlapped, hedgehogs roamed nearby. So far we have read excerpts from Édouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation (1990); Maryse Condé’s I, Tituba, Black witch of Salem (1986); Jamaica Kincaid's The Autobiography of My Mother (1996); Malcom Ferdinand’s Une écologie décoloniale. Penser l'écologie depuis le monde caribéen (2019); Daniel Maximin’s L'invention des désirades (2000). As the program continues to develop, we invite you to read a collection of poems by Nèfta Poetry, Ombres (2011).

«Fanm sé Lanmè, Fanm sé Mòso fè.»*

Born in 1981 in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, Stéphanie Melyon-Reinette a.k.a. Nèfta Poetry is a researcher and writer of essays and poems including Les Bleus de l’Existence (2009), Ombres (2011) and Mousmée—Journal d’une Femme orchidée (2014). Her first book, a continuation of her doctoral thesis, is titled Haïtiens à New York City—Entre Amérique Noire et Amérique Multiculturelle (L'Harmattan, Coll. Minorités & Sociétés, 2009). She researched issues related to the Haitian community in New York City. From 2013 to 2016, she was a member of the French National Committee for the History and Memory of Slavery.

«Ombres»... ces ombres qui errent dans le monde... elles ont tant de visages. Les spectres... Les fantômes, incarnations de nos phobies... Les silhouettes qui se faufilent dans la nuit... Les essaims de mauvais augure... l'Autre aussi... dans sa déconcertante ano (r) malie... **

* Nèfta Poetry, Ombres, p.19. Traduction du créole par l'auteure: La femme est océan, La femme est résilience.
** Ibid., p.5.