Tales from the Heart

True Stories from My Childhood

By Maryse Condé

1999

First Published

3.91

Average Rating

158

Number of Pages

4H49M

Audio Length

With the clarity of Caribbean sunshine and no trace of nostalgia, novelist Maryse Condé recalls her youth in Guadeloupe and in Paris. As a retired civil servant and a schoolteacher, Condé's father and his much younger wife were entitled to regular paid vacations in the City of Light; as a child making her first trip in 1946, young Maryse was upset to see white waiters condescending to her well-educated parents, "as much French as they are." It was her first taste of the colonial contradictions that would increasingly trouble this intelligent, rebellious girl, born on a Mardi Gras afternoon to the rowdy beat of gwoka drums, an audible manifestation of the low-class island culture her parents disdained. Condé's 17 impressionistic autobiographical sketches cast a pointed glance over the racial hierarchy of Guadeloupe, but it's not a bitter book. Her parents were proud to be French but also proud to be examples of black achievement; they raised their daughter to excel, and she did, though perhaps not as they would have preferred. Condé is the first to appreciate the irony of discovering "the real Caribbean" as a student in a Parisian lycée, where she was encouraged by a communist teacher to give her class "a presentation of a book from your island." However you reach a sharper understanding of your origins and your place in the world, the important thing is the journey—a journey her memoir delineates in crisp, lucid language and a wealth of evocative physical and social detail. —Wendy Smith

Avg Rating

3.91

Number of Ratings

1,922

5 STARS

26%

4 STARS

45%

3 STARS

25%

2 STARS

1 STARS

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Author

Maryse Condé

Author · 24 books

Maryse Condé is a Guadeloupean, French language author of historical fiction, best known for her novel Segu. Maryse Condé was born as Maryse Boucolon at Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, the youngest of eight children. In 1953, her parents sent her to study at Lycée Fénelon and Sorbonne in Paris, where she majored in English. In 1959, she married Mamadou Condé, an Guinean actor. After graduating, she taught in Guinea, Ghana, and Senegal. In 1981, she divorced, but the following year married Richard Philcox, English language translator of most of her novels. Condé's novels explore racial, gender, and cultural issues in a variety of historical eras and locales, including the Salem witch trials in I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem and the 19th century Bambara Empire of Mali in Segu. In addition to her writings, Condé had a distinguished academic career. In 2004 she retired from Columbia University as Professor Emeritus of French. She had previously taught at the University of California, Berkeley, UCLA, the Sorbonne, The University of Virginia, and the University of Nanterre. In March 2007, Condé was the keynote speaker at Franklin College Switzerland's Caribbean Unbound III conference, in Lugano, Switzerland.