Condé, Maryse 1937- (Maryse Boucolon)

PERSONAL:

Born February 11, 1937, in Guadeloupe, West Indies; daughter of Auguste and Jeanne Boucolon; married Mamadou Condé, 1958 (divorced, 1981); married Richard Philcox (a translator), 1982; children: Denis, Sylvie, Aicha, Leila. Education: Université de Paris III (Sorbonne Nouvelle), Ph.D, 1975.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Guadeloupe, French West Indies. Office—Columbia University, Department of French and Romance Philology, 515 Philosophy Hall, Mail Code 4902, New York, NY 10027. E-mail—mc363@columbia.edu.

CAREER:

Writer, novelist, short-story writer, essayist, playwright, and educator. Ecole Normale Superieure, Conakry, Guinea, instructor, 1960-64; Ghana Institute of Languages, Accra, Ghana, 1964-66; Lycee Charles de Gaulle, Saint Louis, Senegal, instructor, 1966-68; University of Paris, Paris, France, assistant at Jussieu, 1970-72, lecturer at Nanterre, 1973-80, charge de cours at Sorbonne, 1980-85; University of California, Berkeley, professor of French, 1989-92; University of Maryland, College Park, professor of French, 1992-95; Columbia University, New York, NY, professor of French, 1995—, chairperson of the French and Francophone Institute, 1997-2002, professor emerita, 2002—. French Services of the British Broadcasting Corporation, London, England, program producer, 1968-70; Radio France Internationale, France Culture, program producer, 1980-85. Bellagio writer-in-residence, Rockefeller Foundation, 1986; visiting professor, California Institute of Technology, 1989, University of Virginia, 1993-95, and Harvard University, 1995; lecturer in the United States, Africa, and the West Indies. Presenter of a literary program for Africa on Radio-France.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Fulbright scholar, 1985-86; Grand Prix littéraire de la Femme, Prix Alain Boucheron, 1986, for Moi, Tituba, sorciere noire de Salem; Guggenheim fellow, 1987-88; Puterbaugh fellow, University of Oklahoma—Norman, 1993; Prix Carbet de la Caraibe, 1997, for Desirada; honorary member, l'Académie des Lettres du Québec, 1998; Marguerite Yourcenar Prize (Prix Yourcenar), 1999, for Tales from the Heart: True Stories from My Childhood; Lifetime Achievement Award, New York University Africana Studies Program and Institute of African-American Affairs, 1999; commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France), 2001; chevalier de la Légion d'honneur, 2003; Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for fiction, Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation, 2005, for Who Slashed Celanire's Throat? A Fantastical Tale; commandeur de l'Ordre national du Mérite, 2007. Honorary degrees from Occidental College, 1986; Lehman College of the City University of New York, 1994; and University of the West Indies—Cave Hill, Bridgetown, Barbados, 2005.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) Anthologie de la littérature africaine d'expression française, Ghana Institute of Languages, 1966.

Dieu nous l'a donné (four-act play; title means "God Given"; first produced in Martinique, West Indies, at Fort de France, 1973), Oswald, 1972.

Mort d'Oluwémi d'Ajumako (four-act play; title means "Death of a King"; first produced in Haiti at Theatre d'Alliance Française, 1975), Oswald, 1973.

Le Morne de Massabielle, first produced in Puteaux, France, at Theatre des Hauts de Seine, 1974, translation by husband, Richard Philcox, produced in New York, NY, as The Hills of Massabielle, 1991.

(Translator into French with Richard Philcox) Eric Williams, From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean, Presence Africaine, 1975.

(Editor) La Poésie antillaise (also see below), Nathan (Paris, France), 1977.

(Editor) Le Roman antillais (also see below), Nathan, 1977.

La Civilisation du bossale (criticism), Harmattan (Paris, France), 1978.

Profil d'une oeuvre: Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (criticism), Hatier (Paris, France), 1978.

La Parole des femmes: Essai sur des romancieres des Antilles de langue française (criticism), Harmattan (Paris, France), 1979.

Pays Mele; suivi de, Nanna-Ya (two stories), Hatier, 1985, translation by Nicole Ball published as Land of Many Colors and Nanna-Ya, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 1999.

Haiti Chérie (for children), Bayard Presse, 1987.

Pension les Alizés (play), Mercure de France, 1988, translated by Barbara Brewster Lewis and Catherine Temerson as The Tropical Breeze Hotel, produced in New York, NY, at Ubu Repertory Theater, 1994.

(Author of text) Guadeloupe, photographs by Jean de Boisberranger, Hoa-Qui (Paris, France), 1988.

An Tan Revolisyon (play), Conseil Régional de la Guadeloupe, 1989.

Victor et les barricades (for children), Bayard Presse, 1989.

(Editor and contributor) Bouquet de voix pour Guy Tirolien, Editions Jasor, 1990.

Hugo le terrible, Sépia (Saint Maur), 1991.

Cellule familiale et developpement, U.P.L.G., 1992.

(Editor, with others) L'héritage de Caliban, Editions Jasor, 1992.

Comédie d'amour (play), first produced in Paris, France, at Theatre Fontaine, 1993, produced in New York, NY, 1993.

(With Madeleine Cottenet-Hage) Penser la créolité, Karthala (Paris, France), 1995.

(With Françoise Pfaff) Entretiens avec Maryse Condé: Suivi d'une bibliographie compete, translation published as Conversations with Maryse Condé, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 1996.

(Editor, with Lise Gauvin, and contributor) Nouvelles d'Amerique (short stories), L'Hexagone (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), 1998.

Le Coeur à Rire et à Pleurer (childhood memoir), Robert Laffont, 1999, translation by Richard Philcox published as Tales from the Heart: True Stories from My Childhood, Soho Press (New York, NY), 2001.

French Guadeloupe Writer Maryse Condé Reading from Her Work (sound recording), Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape, Library of Congress (Washington, DC), 1999.

Victoire, des Saveurs et des Mots: Récit, Mercure de France (Paris, France), 2006.

NOVELS

Heremakhonon, Union Generale d'Editions, 1976, translation by Richard Philcox, Three Continents Press (Washington, DC), 1982, Lynne Rienner Publishers (Boulder, CO), 1999.

Une Saison à Rihata, Robert Laffont (Paris, France), 1981, translation by Richard Philcox published as A Season in Rihata, Heinemann (London, England), 1988.

Ségou: Les murailles de terre, Robert Laffont, 1984, translation by Barbara Bray published as Ségu, Viking (New York, NY), 1987.

Ségou II: La terre en miettes, Robert Laffont, 1985, translation by Linda Coverdale published as The Children of Ségu,Viking (New York, NY), 1989.

Moi, Tituba, sorciere noire de Salem, Mercure de France (Paris, France), 1986, translation by Richard Philcox published as I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem, University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA), 1992.

La Vie scélérate, Seghers (Paris, France), 1987, translation by Victoria Reiter published as Tree of Life: A Novel of the Caribbean, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1992.

Traversée de la mangrove, Mercure de France (Paris, France), 1990, translation by Richard Philcox published as Crossing the Mangrove, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1995.

Les Derniers Rois Mages, Mercure de France (Paris, France), 1992, translation by Richard Philcox published as The Last of the African Kings, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 1997.

La Colonie du Nouveau Monde, Robert Laffont (Paris, France), 1993.

La Migration des coeurs, Robert Laffont (Paris, France), 1995, translation by Richard Philcox published as Windward Heights, Faber (London, England), 1998, Soho Press (New York, NY), 1999.

Desirada, Robert Laffont (Paris, France), 1997, translated by Richard Philcox, Soho Press (New York, NY), 2000.

Célanire cou-coupé: Roman fantastique, Robert Laffont (Paris, France), 2000, translation by Richard Philcox published as Who Slashed Celanire's Throat? A Fantastical Tale, Atria (New York, NY), 2004.

La Belle Créole, Mercure de France (Paris, France), 2001.

Histoire de la femme cannibale, Mercure de France (Paris, France), 2003, published as The Story of the Cannibal Woman, Atria Books (New York, NY), 2007.

Also author of recordings for Record CLEF and Radio France Internationale.

Contributor to anthologies, including Othello: New Essays by Black Writers, Howard University Press, 1997; Caribbean Creolization, University Press of Florida, 1998; and Winds of Change: The Transforming Voices of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars, Peter Lang, 1998.

Contributor to journals and periodicals, including Présence Africaine.

Author's works have been translated into six languages.

SIDELIGHTS:

West Indian author Maryse Condé is a prolific novelist, playwright, and critic whose books explore the clash of cultures and races, particularly in Caribbean settings. In the New York Times Book Review, Anderson Tepper declared that Condé "has created an impressive body of work that gives voice to the dispersed and historically silenced peoples of Africa and the Caribbean." Condé's work "deals with characters in domestic situations and employs fictitious narratives as a means of elaborating large-scale activities," asserted World Literature Today writers Charlotte and David Bruner. Drawing on her experiences in Paris, West Africa, and her native Guadeloupe, Condé has created several novels that "attempt to make credible on an increasingly larger scale the personal human complexities involved in holy wars, national rivalries, and migrations of peoples," the Bruners stated. A professor emeriti of French at Columbia University, Condé writes in French, but many of her novels have been translated into English. According to Erik Burns in the New York Times Book Review, she delivers "a vision of the black diaspora that challenges stereotypes by celebrating individual differences."

Condé's first novel, Heremakhonon, relates the journey of Veronica, an Antillean student searching for her roots in a newly liberated West African country. During her stay, Veronica becomes involved with both a powerful government official and a young school director opposed to the new regime; "to her dismay," David Bruner summarized, "she is unable to stay out of the political struggle, and yet she is aware that she does not know enough to understand what is happening." The result of Veronica's exploration, which is told with an "insinuating prose [that] has a surreal, airless quality," as Carole Bovoso related in the Voice Literary Supplement, is that "there were times I longed to rush in and break the spell, to shout at this black woman and shake her." The critic continued: "But no one can rescue Veronica, least of all herself; Condé conveys the seriousness of her plight by means of a tone of relentless irony and reproach." The Bruners noted: "Justly or not, one gains a comprehension of what a revolution is like, what new African nations are like, yet one is aware that this comprehension is nothing more than a feeling. The wise reader will go home as Veronica does," the critics concluded, "to continue more calmly, to reflect, and to observe."

Condé expands her scope in Ségu, "a wondrous novel about a period of African history few other writers have addressed," noted New York Times Book Review contributor Charles R. Larson. In tracing three generations of a West African family during the early and mid-1800s, "Condé has chosen for her subject … [a] chaotic stage, when the animism (which she calls fetishism) native to the region began to yield to Islam," the critic explained. "The result is the most significant historical novel about black Africa published in many a year." Beginning with Dousika, a Bambara nobleman caught up in court intrigue, Ségu trails the exploits of his family, from one son's conversion to Islam to another's enslavement to a third's successful career in commerce, connected with stories of their wives, concubines, and servants. In addition, Condé's "knowledge of African history is prodigious, and she is equally versed in the continent's folklore," remarked Larson. "The unseen world haunts her characters and vibrates with the spirits of the dead."

Some critics, however, faulted the author for an excess of detail in Ségu. The Bruners cautioned: "With such an overwhelming mass of data and with so extensive a literary objective, the risks of … producing a heavy, didactic treatise are, of course, great." They continued: "The main reason that Condé has done neither is, perhaps, because she has written here essentially as she did in her two earlier novels: she has followed the lives of the fictional characters as individuals dominated by interests and concerns which are very personal and often selfish and petty, even when those characters are perceived by other characters as powerful leaders in significant national or religious movements." Because of this, the Bruners concluded, Ségu is "a truly remarkable book…. To know [the subjects of her work] better, as well as to know Maryse Condé even better, would be a good thing."

Subsequent Condé novels have varied in scope and setting from more sweeping historicals such as Children of Ségu and The Last of the African Kings, to character-driven narratives such as Crossing the Mangrove and I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem. In the New York Times Book Review, Howard Frank Mosher observed that one thread uniting all of Condé's work is the creation of "characters [who] not only survive the worst that life can throw at them but also often prevail, on their own terms, against overwhelming odds." Tituba is one such character. Little is known about the historical Tituba—a black female slave who was accused of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts—but Condé weaves a fully fleshed fictitious tale about the remarkable woman and her triumph over a wealth of adversity. Mosher called I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem "an affirmation of a courageous and resourceful woman's capacity for survival."

The vagaries of survival are also at issue in Crossing the Mangrove. The fictitious villagers of Riviere au Sel in Guadeloupe gather at the wake of a mysterious visitor who had predicted his own death. The visitor, Francis Sancher, is drawn in detail through their orations and interior thoughts about him. "Together, the villagers and the intruder inhabit a world of unstable facts," declared Lawrence Thornton in the New York Times Book Review. "The multiple interpretations offered by the living reveal Riviere au Sel as a protean community, changed and changing still because of one man's brief sojourn there." In Booklist, George Needham concluded of Crossing the Mangrove: "This atmospheric novel is quite powerful."

In Windward Heights, Condé retells the classic Wuthering Heights story by Emily Brontë. Set at the beginning of the nineteenth century in Cuba and Guadeloupe, the novel explores the corrosive, obsessive love between dark-skinned Rayze, a foundling, and the mulatto Cathy Gagneur, who shuns Rayze for a lighter-skinned Creole husband. As with the novel upon which it is based, Windward Heights plays itself out over a series of generations, as Rayze's fury shapes his children and their choices into adulthood. Library Journal correspondent Janet Ingraham Dwyer called Windward Heights "a mesmerizing, vivid tale" and "a deft reinterpretation of a classic." Noting that Condé describes "a social and political moment far more complex than Brontë's," a Publishers Weekly reviewer deemed Windward Heights "a large and beautiful tapestry."

Desirada looks at the problems facing West Indians, but from the perspective of those engaged directly with ideas of European, rather than African, culture. Marie-Noelle, born on Guadeloupe to a fifteen-year-old mother in mysterious circumstances, begins a voyage of self-discovery that takes her first to France and then to the United States. "As she probes the mystery surrounding her birth," wrote World Literature Today contributor Mildred Mortimer, "Marie-Noelle embarks upon the healing process that allows her to come to terms with the troubled relationship with her mother and put the pain of rejection behind her." Yet Marie-Noelle is never able to resolve the central question surrounding her birth. Condé explained in a World Literature Today interview with Robert R. McCormick, Jr.: "Marie-Noelle, who only wants to know the answer to some simple questions—Who is my father? Who am I? What happened?—won't ever find out. Because everyone lies. Not in a conscious and malicious way. Because, ultimately, to tell a story is to embellish it, to fabricate it according to one's tastes and desires, to create fiction." In Desirada, concluded a Publishers Weekly reviewer, "Condé once again proves her ability to gracefully capture the voice of the Caribbean diaspora."

Histoire de la femme cannibale, a novel set primarily in post-apartheid South Africa, is, according to Edward Ousselin, writing in World Literature Today, "one of Condé's most personal and successful novels." The main character, Roselie Thibaudin, resembles the author is several ways. She is a successful black artist from Guadeloupe who is married to a white man, Stephen, a British literature professor. Although apartheid has officially ended, Roselie continues to feel estranged from her husband's white friends. To make matters even more difficult, many blacks feel her marriage represents a betrayal of her race. After the couple moves to Cape Town, Rosalie is devastated when Stephen is murdered under mysterious circumstances, supposedly during a robbery. Stephen had allegedly stepped out to buy cigarettes when he was killed, but the investigating detective believes that Stephen had other reasons for being out and about at midnight. With her own sense of identity so closely tied to that of her husband, Roselie must deal with her grief, the sense of being adrift and unsettled, and the possibility that her husband had a devastating secret he kept from her. Struggling through the protracted investigation into Stephen's death, Roselie ponders her past, her family, her relationship with the doomed Stephen, and her interactions with past lovers. As part of her reflections, Roselie develops a keen interest in the cannibal woman of the title, Fiela, who is alleged to have killed, and partially eaten, her husband. Roselie follows Fiela's trial closely and, in the process, takes a big step toward realizing her own independence. Ousselin wrote that "the author paints a depressing picture of a violence-ridden South African society that has yet to shed most of the social consequences of decades of institutionalized racism."

Histoire de la femme cannibale was published in English as The Story of the Cannibal Woman. The book's largest irony, noted Christine DeZelar-Tiedman in Library Journal, is its message that even in a society that is becoming more and more globalized, "humans still fail to trust or understand those who are different from themselves." Booklist reviewer Donna Seaman concluded: "Like a night garden, Condé's tale is mysterious, redolent, and haunting." Chauncey Mabe, reviewing the novel in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, called it a "book of strong narrative juice, its language so rewarding that what is happening in any given passage is almost—but not quite—beside the point." Ousselin called the book a "masterfully controlled mixture of genres, themes, and narrative techniques."

Tales from the Heart: True Stories from My Childhood is a memoir of the author's early years in Guadeloupe. Though black themselves, her parents tried to shield their daughter from the popular black culture on the island. Summer vacations were spent in Paris, where Condé was allowed much more freedom to play with friends and explore than she was back home. Having to attend school in Paris as a teenager only made her more curious about her own heritage. In a review for Booklist, GraceAnne A. DeCandido noted that "Condé conjures heat, and scent, and the childhood bitterness of loss and desire unfulfilled." The book won the 1999 Prix Yourcenar.

Land of Many Colors and Nanna-Ya contains the two title novellas, which originally appeared in the mid-1980s. "Land of Many Colors" turns on a young radical who dies in a bomb explosion. The next day, the young man's mother dies as well, a victim of the stress and shock of her son's demise. The physician who handles their case finds himself drawn into their story as he searches their backgrounds for clues to their motivations and identities. In the wake of the tragedy, he uncovers a family history of intense race and class conflict for both mother and son. Grace, the protagonist of "Nanna-Ya," is a light-skinned Jamaican whose complexion is unfairly seen among her contemporaries as an insult to and betrayal of her island heritage. Grace's husband, George, is a successful merchant, but he is unhappy with their marriage. In response, he embarks on an affair with Joyce. He also begins to identify with the stories of a rebel slave leader who lived during Jamaica's colonial days. Soon, he is fantasizing that he is a descendant of the legendary slave and becomes obsessed with developing a biographical history of the heroic figure, to the exclusion of his marriage, his work, and everything else. Throughout the stories, "the richness of the narrative and the author's understanding of her subject never fail to shine," remarked James Polk in the New York Times Book Review. Condé "writes with warmth and a deep understanding of the interaction between the political and personal realms," commented reviewer Bonnie Johnston, writing in Booklist. Library Journal reviewer Vicki J. Cecil called Condé's writing in these stories "haunting and poetic."

Tree of Life, which a Publishers Weekly reviewer referred to as "masterful," explores the history of a family from Guadeloupe and, in the process, illuminates the background and destiny of the Guadeloupe people. Coco, the narrator, begins her story with great-grandfather Albert Louis, who manages to escape from poverty by securing work on the Panama Canal. Later, Albert Louis becomes wealthy as an undertaker, but his focus on money alienates him from his family and neighbors. His sons react differently to their heritage; one goes to France to study, another enters politics, and the third rejects his wealth and strives to live a simpler life. The beautiful Thecla, granddaughter of Albert Louis, is socially, politically, and romantically active in the various places she lives during the 1960s and 1970s. Despite her social conscience, Thecla has a difficult life with Coco, her daughter, leaving Coco to search for love and validation from the history of her family. As Coco and Thecla travel the world, the younger woman discovers much about her family's background and learns to appreciate not only them, but the entirety of the Guadeloupe people. "Condé's vast skills as a storyteller rest in her intensely vivid characterizations," noted the Publishers Weekly reviewer.

Based on a real-life crime that occurred in Guadeloupe in 1995, in which an infant was found dead of a slit throat in a trash dump, Who Slashed Celanire's Throat? A Fantastical Tale. combines fantasy and mysticism to tell the story of the fictional Celanire, a beautiful African woman with a fraught personal history. As a baby, Celanire was left for dead with her throat cut. A physician, Dr. Jean Pinceau, reattaches Celanire's head and adopts her as his daughter. During a difficult childhood, Celanire's behavior is destructive and vile. She plays a role in her adopted mother's death in the jaws of a mysterious black dog and tries at one point to seduce Pinceau. Later, she is taken in by nuns, and she becomes a missionary to the Ivory Coast. As an adult, she constantly wears scarves to hide the scar on her neck. As the story progresses, the seductive and charismatic Celanire seeks to learn about her history and determine why she was so badly treated and left to die as an infant. Those who try to resist her are doomed as her quest becomes a search not only for her parents and heritage but for vengeance. She discovers that as a child, she was intended as a sacrifice to demons, who took up residence in her body. Appealing to those demons for assistance, Celanire looks for those who had used her as a sacrifice and seeks revenge against them. Condé combines "elements of myth, mysticism and history to create an intriguing and often macabre vision of passion and vengeance," commented a Publishers Weekly critic. A Kirkus Reviews contributor described the novel as "lush and lurid, as are its sultry settings: an intricate brocade conceals its blemishes, seducing the reader with silken irony."

The literary culture of the Caribbean from which Condé writes is rooted both in the oral traditions of the West African griot and in the scripted literature of Europe. Critics of Desirada and Condé's other works have honored the author's use of French as a medium for relating the West Indian experience. Mortimer, for instance, praised Condé's "remarkable ability to use the French language as a vehicle for communicating Creole orality." As Mosher concluded: "It is impossible to read her novels and not come away from them with both a sadder and more exhilarating understanding of the human heart, in all its secret intricacies, its contradictions and marvels."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Condé, Maryse, Le Coeur à Rire et à Pleurer, Robert Laffont, 1999, translation by Richard Philcox published as Tales from the Heart: True Stories from My Childhood, Soho Press (New York, NY), 2001.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 52, 1989, pp. 78-85, Volume 92, 1998, pp. 98-135.

PERIODICALS

African American Review, winter, 1996, Cilas Kemedijo, "The Curse of Writing: Genealogical Strata of a Disillusion; Orality, Islam-Writing, and Identities in the State of Becoming in Maryse Condé's Ségou," p. 124; spring, 1997, Arlene R. Keizer, review of Crossing the Mangrove, p. 175; fall, 2000, Kevin Meehan, review of Conversations with Maryse Condé, p. 548.

Belles Lettres: A Review of Books by Women, January, 1996, Viola G. Thomas, interview with Maryse Condé, p. 20.

Black Issues Book Review, November-December, 2004, Joycelyn A. Wilson, review of Who Slashed Celanire's Throat? A Fantastical Tale, p. 70.

Booklist, February 15, 1995, George Needham, review of Crossing the Mangrove, p. 1057; April 15, 1999, Bonnie Johnston, review of Land of Many Colors and Nanna-Ya, p. 1513; August, 1999, Grace Fill, review of Windward Heights, p. 2023; September 15, 2001, GraceAnne A. DeCandido, review of Tales from the Heart: True Stories from My Childhood, p. 179; February 15, 2007, Donna Seaman, review of The Story of the Cannibal Woman, p. 34.

Callaloo, summer, 1995, Arlette Smith, review of Entretiens avec Maryse Condé: Suivi d'une bibliographie compete, p. 707.

Canadian Woman Studies, winter, 2004, Piper Kendrix Williams, "Journeys of Detour in Maryse Condé's A Season in Rihata," p. 76.

Essence, November, 2000, review of Desirada, p. 80; October, 2004, profile of Maryse Condé, p. 143.

Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2001, review of Tales from the Heart, p. 1184; July 1, 2004, review of Who Slashed Celanire's Throat? p. 591; December 1, 2006, review of The Story of the Cannibal Woman, p. 1187.

Library Journal, March 15, 1995, p. 96; June 1, 1999, Vicki J. Cecil, review of Land of Many Colors and Nanna-Ya, p. 180; August, 1999, Janet Ingraham Dwyer, review of Windward Heights, p. 136; October 1, 2001, Barbara O'Hara, review of Tales from the Heart, p. 97; September 1, 2004, Amy Ford, review of Who Slashed Celanire's Throat? p. 136; March 1, 2007, Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, review of The Story of the Cannibal Woman, p. 69.

New York Times Book Review, May 31, 1987, Charles R. Lawson, "Converts and Concubines," p. 47; October 25, 1992, Howard Frank Mosher, "Staying Alive," p. 11; July 16, 1995, Lawrence Thornton, "The Healer," review of Crossing the Mangrove, p. 17; February 8, 1998, Erik Burns, review of The Last of the African Kings, p. 18; May 23, 1999, James Polk, review of Land of Many Colors and Nanna-Ya, p. 23; September 5, 1999, Anderson Tepper, review of Windward Heights, p. 16; January 13, 2002, Amanda Fortini, review of Tales from the Heart, p. 20.

Publishers Weekly, June 29, 1992, review of Tree of Life, p. 50; January 23, 1995, review of Crossing the Mangrove, p. 65; July 12, 1999, review of Windward Heights, p. 76; October 9, 2000, review of Desirada, p. 73; September 10, 2001, review of Tales from the Heart, p. 79; July 19, 2004, review of Who Slashed Celanire's Throat?, p. 143; November 27, 2006, review of The Story of the Cannibal Woman, p. 31.

Research in African Literatures, winter, 1997, Ruthmarie H. Mitsch, "Maryse Condé's Mangroves," p. 54.

Romanic Review, May-November, 2003, Jacques Coursil, review of La Belle Créole, p. 345; May-November, 2003, Emily Apter, "Condé's Creolite in Literary History," p. 437; May-November, 2003, Maryse Condé, "En Guise de Preface," p. 253; May-November, 2003, Madeleine Cottenet-Hage, "Maryse D'une Rive a L'autre," p. 261; May-November, 2003, Kaiama L. Glover, "Sur les Traces de Maryse Condé," p. 255.

School Library Journal, March, 2002, Joyce Fay Fletcher, review of Tales from the Heart, p. 262.

South Florida Sun-Sentinel, September 15, 2004, Chauncey Mabe, review of Who Slashed Celanire's Throat?; February 21, 2007, Chauncey Mabe, "Carribean Novelist Maryse Condé's Ambitious Mystery Is Filled with Delicious Irony and Remarkable Narrative Verve," review of The Story of the Cannibal Woman.

World Literature Today, summer, 1994, Hal Wylie, "La Colonie du Nouveau Monde," profile of Maryse Condé, p. 619; spring, 1998, Mildred Mortimer, review of Desirada, p. 437, Charlotte H. Bruner, review of Pays Mele, p. 438; spring, 1999, Edward Ousselin, review of Guadeloupe; winter, 2000, review of Windward Heights, p. 222; summer, 2000, Robert H. McCormick, Jr., "Desirada—A New Conception of Identity," p. 519; October-December, 2003, Edward Ousselin, review of Histoire de la femme cannibale, p. 82; September-December, 2004, profile of Maryse Condé, p. 27; May-June, 2007, Robert McCormick, review of Victoire, des Saveurs et des Mots, p. 66.

ONLINE

Columbia University, Department of French and Romance Philology Web site,http://www.columbia.edu/cu/french/department/ (August 5, 2007), biography of Maryse Condé.