Sublime

Elle m’avait offert, avant de me laisser partir, une boîte de céréales et deux petites boîtes de lait concentré. Je ne pouvais m’empêcher de penser à la générosité qui résistait à la très grande violence, la misère et l’indifférence qui existaient dans la Cité. Féfé faisait partie de ceux qui aidaient, avec les maigres moyens dont elle disposait, c

So soon. So soon. She hadn’t even begun the trip back. Back to her grandmother’s house in the city where the red shutters glowed, and already she had been called “gal.”

But it cut him, all the same, to see one of his own so upset by the sight of what other children craved and he could not help but wonder if she’d be brave enough or able for what the world had in store.

But Grandmama is too heavy to blow away or drown in tears made because somebody didn’t see me as a somebody worth respecting. You hear me? Ain’t nothing in the world worse than looking at your children drowning, knowing ain’t nothing you can do because you scared that if you get to trying to save them, they might see that you can’t swim either. But

Her imagination, she knew, was a means to escape this cul-de-sac of despair.

susurrus

Only with Africanist characters is such a project thinkable: delayed gratification for the pleasure of a (white) child.

be noticed from afar.

Estaba amaneciendo; veía una lucecita azul allá en el horizonte que iría creciendo y le mostraría el huerto de su casa en Pétionville, con sus árboles frutales, sus jacarandás y enredaderas. Pronto las gallinas comenzarían a cacarear y los perros a ladrar. Con el día y la luz el miedo disminuiría y él tendría que dominarlo del todo antes de ir a la