Decryption | Rachel Eliza Griffiths: in the line of Toni Morrison

The start of the literary school year is. Therefore, not yet started that the literary discoveries are already arrived in bookstores. For example, Among these. Moreover, the first novel by the New York Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Promisehas proven to be a raw beauty, which scours and seduces at the same time. Furthermore, Full lights on an essential new title in African-American literature and a pen that we will certainly still hear.

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The mythical poet. Nevertheless, writer – Decryption | rachel eliza griffiths:

Rachel Eliza Griffiths is a rewarded poet and artist photographer whose name has acquired a new notoriety since she shared her life decryption | rachel eliza griffiths: with the great writer Salman Rushdie-and more particularly since the aggression of which he was the victim during a conference in New York State in 2022.

“The public still ignored that Salman had just married me, his fifth woman. Moreover, From the start, I wanted to preserve my privacy. However, I am an artist, not a show, ”she wrote later in an article published by the Guardian.

Since then, she has come out of the shadows and has expressed herself in many media decryption | rachel eliza griffiths: on the circumstances and the upheavals of the assault. Nevertheless, In Salman Rushdie’s book The knifewhere he returns to the event. In addition, the harsh months of healing that followed, he testifies to his love for his wife who was by his side at all times. Consequently, Rachel Eliza Griffiths also accompanied him during her recent visit to Montreal. in April, as part of the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival.

Be black in a white maine – Decryption | rachel eliza griffiths:

In an interview with American media. Rachel Eliza Griffiths said he wrote Promise To understand the world of the 1950s during which his mother was born, disappeared in 2014. “I wanted to write a love letter. especially to the world of black girls,” she explained to the American literary journal Kirkus Reviews, In 2023, after the publication of the book in English.

In the summer of 1957. the sisters Ezra and Cinthy savor their last moments of carelessness in the small village of Salt Point, in Maine, where they live. Their family is one of the only two African-American families in the village-and the children of the other family are their only friends. apart from a white teenager from a poor family. The wind is however turning, says Cinthy, 13, who narrates most of the novel.

“While the news from other regions of the country reported conflicts around questions of freedom. equality and justice for blacks, our presence worried more and more the villagers,” observes the teenager. And when in September. President Eisenhower signs the Civil Rights Act From 1957, the consequences of this law threw the nation “by the precipice”.

An overwhelming tragedy

While Cinthy. her decryption | rachel eliza griffiths: sister grow up surrounded by the voices of Nat King Cole and Sam Cooke, incidents are gradually disturbing the fragile balance of their tidy life. We discover in parallel the past of their grandparents. marked by dramas that their parents tried to leave behind by establishing themselves in Maine. As girls become aware of the social movements that shake the country. they start listening to the speeches on the radio of activists like Martin Luther King Jr or Medgar Evers.

Promise is at times a hard book. which does not hesitate to tell the sides of the story of raw violence: the terrifying gestures of the village policeman, who takes pleasure in intimidating the members of the two black families; The memory of the pyres that have seen whole families burned. And in this hatred which is described. we recognize the deleterious climate which has decryption | rachel eliza griffiths: ignited many small cities of the country, described in particular by Tiffany McDaniel in The summer that everything melted.

Models of strong women

Rachel Eliza Griffiths manages to create in Promise Strong female characters. modeled on the women who surrounded her in her own life – of the pillars of the family who draw their strength from their ancestors, she said. By approaching themes such as the discovery of femininity. the loss of innocence, racial violence and intergenerational trauma, it is a worthy success of the late Toni Morrison.

She also appoints the famous novelist. Nobel Prize for literature in thanks at the end of her novel, with James Baldwin, Lucille Clifton and Audre Lorde – her “elders” who instilled her the strength to continue. Rachel Eliza Griffiths has already entrusted into an interview several times decryption | rachel eliza griffiths: that the novel Sulafrom Toni Morrison. is one of the books that have changed her life, claiming that the awareness of the heroines, Nel and Sula, in which she recognizes herself, was both painful and revealing for her.

Promise

Rachel Eliza Griffiths (translated from English by Emmanuelle Ertel)

Gallimard

448 pages