Welcome to Litsy!

Just finished this biography of Jacqueline Manicom, midwife, writer, feminist, pro-choice & anti-colonial activist (pictured here w/ Simone de Beauvoir). She was born in #Guadeloupe in a mixed Indian/Black/White family. 1st in her family who learned to read, she wanted to become a doctor but had to settle for midwifery for external reasons. She took her own life in 1976, writing in her suicide note that she was tired of being poor, Black & female.

Maryse Condé died last week. To honour her memory, I read one of her novels I hadn't yet read. It tells the story of Rosélie, a Black Guadeloupean woman living in Cape Town, and whose white husband was mysteriously killed while on an errand in the middle of the night. Moving & insightful but requires close reading to get the most of it.

Pic of Cape Town's Malay Quarter (Octagon via Wikimedia), only mentioned in passing in the book, but so pretty

In this book, the narrator tells what she knows of the story of her grandmother, Victoire, who lived most of her life on #Guadeloupe. Parts are really compelling, but as a whole I found it quite uneven. This is my second read from this author and I would read her again.

#ReadingAmericas2023

Read to cover #Guadeloupe for #ReadingTheAmericas2023 @BarbaraBB @Librarybelle.

A police procedural set in #Guadeloupe. A female body of a tourist is found on a nudist beach, and it is discovered that she has been raped and murdered. This murder is investigated by Algerian-French judge Anne Marie Laveaud. This book meandered a bit too much for me and was much longer than it needed to be. It was okay but nothing to write home about.

Solitude was a young black woman freed from slavery after the French Revolution. But when Napoleon tried to restore slavery on the island of #Guadeloupe, while pregnant she joined and fought in the resistance. She was captured and executed the day after she gave birth. That‘s basically all that is known, but this author repeats it ad nauseum to fill more than half the book. The second half is a little about the resistance; it lost. The book ⬇️

#Guadeloupe #readingtheAmericas @Librarybelle @BarbaraBB

That man spread so much evil and chaos across the world! #Guadeloupe #readingtheAmericas @Librarybelle @BarbaraBB

This is my next ebook for #readingtheAmericas for #Guadeloupe. I've been so excited to read this one. I just added it to the Litsy database, so it's worth your while to read the summary. It sounds so good. And, it's only 65 pages! @Librarybelle @BarbaraBB

To be honest, though, I'm not sure what to make of the description of the author: “The Stephen King of History...“

#AutumnPlease! Day 29: There is #Betrayal in this novel - mostly perpetrated by the men in the female protagonists‘ lives. Finished it in less than a week, and read it as part of our #DecolonizeReading2023 theme. Review is forthcoming. Paired with banoffee cheesecake. Delish.

#IdiomInsight Day 17: This, right here, is the #AppleOfMyEye paired with a #DecolonizeReading2023 title that I have been meaning to get to for the looongest time.