"What Are We Blackmen Who Are Called French?": The Dilemma of Identity in Oyono's Un vie de boy and Sembène's La Noire de . . .

While on his deathbed, Toundi, the young Cameroonian narrator in Ferdinand Oyono's novel Une vie de boy [Houseboy] asks a poignant question, "Que sont tous les nègres qu'on dit français?" ["What are we blackmen who are called French?"].¹ This seemingly simple statement, no doubt asked by many Africans during France's colonial reign, actually was one of profound complexity pointing as it does to the dilemma of colonial identity. It is a question that we can gain a better understanding of by examining Oyono's satiric masterpiece as well as the tragic story of the Senegalese maid Diouana in Ousmane Sembène's short story "La Noire de . . ." ["The Promised Land"] and the movie based on it, La Noire de . . . [Black Girl].

An analysis of these works, however, first necessitates situating them against the backdrop of the French colonial system. Unlike the British, who favored a hands-off approach, the French purported to be more egalitarian. They believed it was their moral obligation to assimilate their subjects, passing on the "superior" French language, culture, and governmental system to their charges. They hoped to make their sixty million overseas subjects think of themselves as "little Frenchmen." The system was "based on a pre-conceived faith in the equality of all men and their rapid perfectibility."² Unfortunately, however, it was also studded with racial prejudice and a strong paternalism. During the twentieth century, another system, association, began to be utilized, promising "tolerance, respect for native customs and laws, cooperation and assistance in place of exploitation."³ Both systems of assimilation and association, however, despite their seemingly lofty intentions, were premised on one tenet: the innate superiority of the Europeans and the need to establish dominance over their colonial charges. The dilemma, faced so painfully by Toundi and Diouana as well as millions of others, was that these paternalistic systems, because of racist premises, never allowed Africans to become fully accepted as equals. The goal was not "simply to 'civilize' the African but to exploit him ruthlessly in the process."⁴ The result on the individual African was often to leave him/her in a liminal state in which he/she was bereft of any real identity, either African or French. As critic Lilian Corti posits, "Oyono anticipates [Frantz] Fanon's assertion that 'le colonisé est un hystérique' 'the colonized person is neurotic.'"⁵ It is the psychological damage inflicted on Toundi, Diouana, and the wider cultures which they represent, and the hard lessons they learn that is the subject of Oyono and Sembène's work and of this essay.

Toundi's story begins with his death, not in Cameroon but while on "holiday" (actually exile) in Spanish Guinea. The very fact that Toundi can view life in another colonial territory as a place of refuge is a telling indictment of the French experience for Black Africans. Before he dies, Toundi, who acts as a witness to what has been done not only to himself but his native land, is able to pass on his story to a nameless fellow Cameroonian listener. This listener, before meeting Toundi, had not dared to consider the question of identity with which this essay opens; however, the story he hears is transformative. Furthermore, it is a cautionary tale meant to be passed on to others, starting with this anonymous listener, not to repeat the innocent mistakes of Toundi and believe the lie that they are truly Frenchmen. That the lesson has been learned by the listener is obvious. The story affects him enough not only to read the diary that Toundi has left behind but to translate it from Ewondo, an indigenous Cameroonian tongue, to French in order to reach a wider audience. It is interesting that Toundi, who knows French, chooses to write in the African language, perhaps a subconscious act of rebellion against the Europeans. The story is meant, however, not only for Black Africans but perhaps even more for the colonizing forces to...