Description
Set in Fort-de-France, Martinique, this vivid memoir follows a boy’s school days as colonial schooling tries to reshape his language, imagination, and identity. Through a succession of formidable teachers—one determined to erase Creole speech, another championing a different ideological “truth”—the classroom becomes a battleground where authority and culture collide. Alongside the boy’s own fears and triumphs stands Big Bellybutton, the class scapegoat, whose Creole stories of heroes, magic, zombies, and fantastic creatures offer a living counterworld to the imported French tales. With prose charged by Creolisms and ribald humor, the book captures the universal turbulence of childhood while illuminating the deeper themes of language, power, and resistance that shaped one of the most distinctive voices in French and Caribbean literature.
Available Editions
paperback
University of Nebraska Press
Published Jan 1, 1997
146 pages
ISBN: 9780803263765
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Details
First Published
1997
Language
fra
Translation
From: fra
Content Warnings
Content and trigger warnings for School Days by Patrick Chamoiseau.