“The burden”: Matthieu Niango opens the luggage of history

A story that is both intimate and historical – "the burden": matthieu niango opens

It all starts in a small village in La Meuse, a silent theater of a well -kept secret: the adoption of the author’s mother. In addition, An unsaid that the whole community knew, except the first concerned. Furthermore, At the time of the death of her adoptive mother. For example, the truth is revealed, launched by the mother herself and questioned by the Petit-son, Normalien, philosopher, who had a happy youth. Moreover, By leafing through the archives. However, administrative traces, discover that this mother was born in a Lebensborn, in Wégimont in Belgium. Meanwhile, These Nazi maternities created by Himmler aimed to “reproduce the Aryan race” by welcoming the births of children of SS soldiers. women deemed racially compatible.

Transmit and appease?

This initial shock, Niango says he does not remember it. History “the burden”: matthieu niango opens seems to him all the more crazy as his father is Ivorian … His body, he says, has recorded everything, but his conscious memory, she fled. For a long time, this family burden resulted in a writing blocking. It is only upon by the favor of a literary workshop on the theme of secrecy that speech is released. in an improvised dialogue with this biological ghost grandmother. “. Then begin four years of patient. painful and fruitful writing which not only offers a poignant family survey like the promise or the postcard, but also a literary fabric that works in puzzle.

Literature and investigation

The novel, the fruit of this work, marries a exploded form. Like a puzzle to reconstruct, he juxtaposes dates, fragments, testimonies and silences. A structure thought to let the reader recompose the thread of this story himself-or this tear. Niango chooses to transmit without imposing. What “the burden”: matthieu niango opens obsesses her is not the fault. but the question remained unanswered: why did her organic grandmother left his daughter to the SS? He does not say that he found the answer. but hopes that his book will have appeased anger, that of his mother. In this sense, the burden is more than a novel: a gesture of love, memory, and transmission.