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Notes to a Black Woman
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Brief Description
The extraordinary testimony of a daring Caribbean writer-activist, determined to expose injustice and defend the dignity of migrant workers. In the 1960s, hundreds of women travelled from French colonies in the West Indies to become domestic workers for white families in France. Recruited by the French...
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Notes to a Black Woman
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Description
The extraordinary testimony of a daring Caribbean writer-activist, determined to expose injustice and defend the dignity of migrant workers.
In the 1960s, hundreds of women travelled from French colonies in the West Indies to become domestic workers for white families in France. Recruited by the French government with the promise of economic opportunity, these women instead found themselves subjected to racial discrimination, deplorable living conditions, overwork and no pay until they "earned back" the cost of the trip to France.
After hearing the shocking stories of Caribbean domestic workers, Françoise Ega took a position as a cleaning woman in a wealthy French home in order to chronicle these abuses. Structured as a collection of unsent letters to the Brazilian writer Carolina Maria de Jesus, Notes to a Black Woman weaves Ega's experiences with memories of her childhood in Martinique, the joys and tribulations of family life, and her reflections on the power of the written word to reveal the discomfiting truths behind the facade of bourgeois French society.
Composed on her bus commutes and by candlelight at her kitchen table while her five children slept, these pages comprise one of the most moving literary witnesses to female exploitation and racism in the twentieth century. From a singular and unforgettable voice, Notes to a Black Woman is a piercing denunciation of the legacies of colonialism and slavery, a wholesale rejection of alienation, and an intimate archive of friendship, joy, solidarity, motherhood, and hope.
Series: The Margellos World Republic of Letters
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Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780300270297
Publisher: Yale University Press
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 10 February 2026
Country: United States
Imprint: Yale University Press
Contributors:
- Translated by Emma Ramadan
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Width: 127.0mm
Height: 197.0mm
Weight: 250g
Pages: 248
About the Author
FranΓ§oise Ega (1920β1976) was an Afro-Martinican writer and labor activist who lived and worked in France and several African countries. She is the author of two novels, Le temps des Madras (1966) and the posthumously published LβalizΓ© ne soufflait plus (2000). Emma Ramadan is an educator and a prizewinning literary translator from French. Her translations include works by Maud Ventura, Meryem Alaoui, and Abdellah TaΓ―a.
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