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Zusatztext "Zobel relays José’s pain and frustration in measured! matter-of-fact prose. This perfectly captures the education of an outsider in the shadow of colonization." —Publishers Weekly Informationen zum Autor Joseph Zobel was born in 1915 in Rivière-Salée, Martinique. His many works include the novel La rue cases-négres (translated as Black Shack Alley ) and its continuation, La fète à Paris . A noted poet and a gifted sculptor, as well as an influential radio producer in Senegal, Zobel retired to a small village in 1974. He died in 2006. Klappentext The semi-autobiographical, Caribbean novel that explores shifting race relations in early twentieth-century colonial Martinique, with a foreword by Martinican author Patrick ChamoiseauA Penguin Classic Following in the tradition of Richard Wright's Black Boy, Joseph Zobel's semi-autobiographical 1950 novel Black Shack Alley chronicles the coming-of-age of José, a young boy grappling with issues of power and identity in colonial Martinique. As José transitions from childhood to young adulthood and from rural plantations to urban Fort-de-France on a quest for upward mobility, he bears witness to and struggles against the various manifestations of white supremacy, both subtle and overt, that will alter the course of his life. His ally in this struggle is his grandmother, M'man Tine, who fights her own weariness to release at least one child from the plantation village, a dirt street lined with the shacks of sugarcane workers. Zobel's masterpiece, the basis for the award-winning film Sugar Cane Alley, is a powerful testament to twentieth-century life in Martinique, with a foreword by award-winning Martinican author Patrick Chamoiseau. Whenever the day had been without incident or misfortune, the evening arrived with a smile of tenderness. From as far off as I could see the approach of M'man Tine, my grandmother, at the end of the wide road that took the blacks into the cane fields of the plantation and brought them home again, I would rush off to meet her, imitating the flight of the mansfenil, the gallop of the donkeys, and with shouts of joy, carrying along the entire group of my little friends who, like me, were awaiting their parents' return. M'man Tine knew that once I'd come to meet her, I must have behaved myself properly while she was away. So, from the bodice of her dress, she would take some tidbit which she would give me: a mango, a guava, some coco-plums, a bit of yam left over from her lunch, wrapped in a green leaf; or, even better than all that, a piece of bread. M'man Tine always brought me something to eat. Her work companions often made this observation, and M'man Tine would say that she could not put anything whatsoever to her mouth without keeping some of it for me. Behind us there appeared other groups of workers, and those of my friends who, recognizing their parents, rushed off to meet them, doubling their shouts of joy. While devouring what I had to eat, I let M'man Tine continue her conversation, and I followed her quietly. "My God, thank you; I've made it back!" she sighed, placing the long handle of her hoe against the shack. She then removed the small round basket of bamboo slats perched on her head and sat on a stony outcropping in front of the shack which served as a bench. Finally, having found in the bosom of her dress a rusty tin box, which contained a limestone pipe, some coarse tobacco, and a box of matches, she began to smoke slowly, silently. My day was also at an end. The other mamans and papas had also arrived; my little friends returned to their shacks. Games were over. To smoke, M'man Tine occupied almost all the space this huge stone offered. She would turn to the side where there were beautiful colors in the sky, stretch out and cross ...
