Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #440820 in Books
• Published on: 1997-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 146 pages

Amazon.com Review
Martinican author Patrick Chamoiseau has long been a proponent of "Creolity," a literary movement that seeks to preserve the character of Creole language and culture against the threat of assimilation into French ways of speaking and thinking. In School Days, the author transports us back to his childhood, providing a context for the artistic and personal choices he has made as an adult.

The lines are clearly drawn early on in this memoir; young Chamoiseau's teacher, a black Martinican who has adopted both the language and the attitudes of France, is contrasted with the rich cultural and linguistic traditions that thrive outside the school. At school, Teacher lectures on Alexander, Napoleon, the superiority of Western civilization; European fairy-tales about Cinderella and Merlin dominate the classroom while out on the playground, Creole children whisper illicit stories of zombies, water sprites, and flying sorceresses. Light-skinned children become favorites; dark-skinned ones are subjected to Teacher's ridicule; Creole equals shame. The students' sense of confusion is heightened even further when Teacher becomes ill and a substitute takes over the class for a week. This teacher, imbued with the ideals of "Negritude," replaces white with black, strawberry with calabash, Gaul with African, yet remains as dogmatic in his own way as Teacher.

School Days is a ribald, terrifying, ultimately joyful journey through Patrick Chamoiseau's formative years. At the end, the author's younger self begins to master French at last, but he also finds" bit by bit by bit the homey little Creole in his head was joined by scraps of French words, phrases...There was no looking back...." In these lines, Chamoiseau provides a glimpse of the man this boy will eventually become.

From Library Journal
A Prix Goncourt novelist from Martinique, Chamoiseau (Texaco, Pantheon, 1997), continues the narration of his immersion in the alien land of French primary education with what may well be the most moving book published in French in 20 years. Despite the harshness of his experience, self-pity is absent; nostalgia, unthinkable. Survival requires mastery of French culture; integrity requires preservation of Martinican Creole. The hero is the "little black boy" (negrillon), and his hangman/savior is a composite "Teacher." Chamoiseau, who is a collaborator of folklorist Rafael Confiant, achieves distance through the use of the refrain cues of oral storytellers. Translator Coverdale provides only as much of a glossary as the author allowed her and compensates by the clarity of English for the loss of the polysemy embedded in the French (e.g., the French title Chemin d'ecole suggests not only that there is a way to school, but also that "school" is the way to take). Our reading repertory is truly enriched with Chamoiseau.?Marilyn Gaddis Rose, SUNY at Binghamton
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Having already evoked the Creole experience in folktale (Creole Folktales, 1995) and novel (Texaco, 1997, which won France's Prix Goncourt), Martinique's Chamoiseau proves an inventive memoirist in his account of a boy's struggle to keep his identity in a school committed to crushing it. In the first part, a ``little black boy'' badgers his mother to let him go to school; in the second part, he comes to regret his wish. Some of the school's terrors--sadistic teachers, schoolyard bullies--seem overly familiar. What is fresh is this school's systematic effort to root the Creole--``po'-nigger talk'' associated with poverty and subjection--out of the children and substitute pure French, the language of Martinique's imperial masters. The attempt results mainly in fostering shame and resentment as the students cling to their identity. The child's limited consciousness of this struggle (``his tongue soon seemed heavy to him . . . his accent hateful'') is expertly blended with the adult's awareness of the larger cultural issues. Never a simpleminded ideologue (he ridicules a substitute teacher whose black pride prevented him from ``tackl[ing] either the Universal or its world order''), the author sympathetically portrays the Francophile teacher's motives while condemning his actions; the preferred butt of the teacher's cruelty, Big Bellybutton, is also a memorable character. The irony of a memoir written in French about the evils of French language education is not evaded: The gift of letters is ultimately shown to be ``an inky lifeline of survival'' that allows the author to preserve Creole oral culture. That culture infuses his prose, vividly written in storyteller's rhythms and peppered with such Creole phrases as ``ziggedy-devil.'' Though sometimes distracting, the use of a chorus of r‚pondeurs and frequent shifting from third- person singular to first-person plural help transport the reader inside a foreign sensibility. Sometimes reading like an archetypal narrative of cultural domination, sometimes like an intimate memory from one's own childhood, this memoir rewards the effort to learn its language. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Read this book!!
School Days is one of the most charming, delightful books that I have ever read. It is filled with bold imagination, clever and expressive language, and a beautiful artistic vision. The excitement and love that this book inspired in me was so strong that it took several days after I had finished reading the book before my emotions dissipated.

Enjoyable and enriching!!
This is as satisfying as a book can get. I had a hard time putting it down once I started. The narrative is spiced with brilliant word-pictures and dialogue that will bring smiles to your face. As well as entertaining, it unfolds the drama of life for the Creole in Martinique. Well worth it to pick up this book and give yourself a superb treat.

Simply excellent!
This book captures the true issues that all Caribbean people live with daily. I am using it in my literature class of 16-18 year old and they have much to say about the issues highlighted. They feel very strongly about them and identify with them. It is a great work and I strongly recommend that all read it. It is a great must have for your personal library.
Thank you M. Chamoiseau for such a great work.