To go from Conakry to São Paulo, I had to go through Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle and back again, a sort of double round trip since it is off Dakar that the plane turns off to reach the coast. is and vice versa. This convoluted itinerary made pianist Luiz Gustavo Carvalho, artistic director of the Festival Artes Vertentes de Tiradentes (in the state of Minas Gerais), where I was invited to talk about Pelourinho, my first novel translated in Brazil: the triangular trade is still not over. »
We understand why Brazil, which has the largest African diaspora in the Americas, is considered the second black country in the world just after Nigeria. Despite or because of the slave trade, the two sides of the South Atlantic therefore had everything to forge intense cooperative relations on the commercial and human levels. It is not so, alas, and the causes of this absurd mutual ignorance are multiple on one side as on the other.
And yet, nothing closer than Brazil and Africa: same latitude, same climate, same vegetation, at many prices, same population! Portuguese slavery was cruel, very cruel, but for something, misfortune is good, generally it preserved family ties and even to some extent tribal identities. In Salvador de Bahia, for example, black people lived by neighborhood: Yorubas in Barroquinha, Fons in Carmo, Minas in Saudi, Congos in Pelourinho, Fulanis and Hausas in Corpo Santo, etc. This gave the South American giant an African memory that only Haiti can challenge. It is enough to be convinced of it to attend the carnival of Rio or to pray to candomblé, this Afro-Brazilian rite.
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* 1986, Ex aequo Black African Literary Prize for “The Scales of the Sky”; 2008, Renaudot Prize for “The King of Kahel”; 2012, Erckmann-Chatrian Prize and Grand Prix of the Métis novel for “The Black Terrorist”; 2013, Grand Prix Palatine and Prix Ahmadou-Kourouma for “The Black Terrorist”; 2017, Grand Prix de la francophonie for all of his work. Tierno Monénembo’s latest publication was published by Editions du Seuil. Its title: “Saharan Indigo”.