Tale of Black Histories

Reviews / Votes

"Combined with the rich notes on the cultural references (cogently summarised and presented without ever being reductive) and the truly illuminating staging considerations, this edition of Tale of Black Histories will become a landmark in postcolonial studies, across many disciplines and languages, surely the key contribution of such edition in a domain dominated by English and Spanish. More important, it will inspire schools and universities worldwide to experiment with the play, following Glissant's wishes, and that of the IME team of artists, teachers, and students, reaching out to the new decolonial struggles and reflections currently taking place in world politics." Hugues Azerad, University of Cambridge "With this dazzling volume, Daily and Sahakian have recovered a keystone in the tradition of revolutionary black drama. In an audacious experiment in popular theater, Glissant and his collaborators took performance "off the beaten path" in an effort to find Martinican audiences where they lived: in the marketplace, in the public square, on the playground. Tale of Black Histories is a sweeping pageant of collective consciousness, a multilingual chrestomathy of oppression and liberation - an open template that invites us to take it up and adapt it to fit new versions of "the same story" even today." Brent Hayes Edwards, author of The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism 'This lively translation of Histoire de negre [Tale of Black Histories] smartly recognizes and celebrates Edouard Glissant's early cultural activism. The translators/editors, Emily Sahakian and Andrew Daily, assert convincingly that Glissant's commitment to a pedagogical theatre not only informs his later theorization of the Caribbean condition but also addresses oppression wherever it occurs. Histoire de negre (1971) -- a collective assemblage born of Glissant's overarching educational project at his Institute for Martinican Studies -- revisits official French "History" by juxtaposing opposing texts. He thus creates a dialogue that exposes the horrors and hypocrisy of colonialism. As Sahakian and Daily tell us, the resulting "histories" demonstrate how colonial power twists the truth but also how anti-colonial artists uncoil it, bringing to consciousness that which has been veiled. In their wonderfully informative introduction and notes, Sahakian and Daily explain the stakes of doing this kind of theatre work in Martinique, as well as the potential for reprising and reframing Tale of Black Histories for contemporary Anglophone production (which, in fact, Sahakian has done with several groups of students). Those interested in translation will learn a great deal from examining how the French text, included in this volume, has been transformed for production in English. Scholars of Glissant will marvel at how his gang of theatrical mavericks engaged with popular audiences in impromptu and participatory gatherings.' Judith G. Miller, New York University