D'autres vies sous la tienne by Mérine Céco (review)

Fictions that include autobiographical details carry a certain power, especially when it concerns oppressed populations. And Mérine Céco is a writer who infuses autobiographical elements in most of her fictional works. What is unique in D'autres vies sous la tienne is how personal it feels. We are used to reading the author's novels in the first person, as in Au revoir, Man Tine (2016), a collection of short stories that recounts childhood memories of a family members, places, and events in Martinique, or in Le talisman de la présidente (2018), in which she recounts in fictional form a very real period of sexual and professional harassment that she experienced as president of the Université des Antilles. In this new novel, however, the tone and content feel even more personal as the author brings us into her home and family. She recounts her daughter's coming-of-age, leaving home to study, in a melancholy introduction with which readers who are parents or adult children can identify: "On ne peut pas croire que notre cellule familiale restera toujours telle qu'elle a été. On sait qu'elle doit éclater pour que nos enfants créent à leur tour leur propre chez-soi, leur famille" (13). This family, on the verge of separation, is one of suppressed emotions, in which the parents and two children, one son and one daughter, have trouble at times communicating, despite their mutual attachment. What will draw the mother and the departing daughter together, however, and give structure to the novel, is the daughter's desire to explore her parents' Martinican roots after growing up in Metropolitan France. After the first chapter, the novel takes the form of a series of letters, first from the mother to her daughter, and then from the daughter to the mother. For her part, the mother seeks to tell her daughter about her Creole past that, as is so common among the oppressed, she and her husband had suppressed and never talked about with their children. She begins recounting how she met her husband and then goes on to tell the story of her Creole family and past. The second part of the book contains the letters from the daughter to the mother. Several chapters are interruptions in the mother's reading of her daughter's letter as she reflects on how her daughter has responded to her story. In the beginning of her correspondence, the mother had confessed that she had held back her past from her children because she thought that they would not be interested. However, reading her daughter's letter, the mother realizes how much her daughter can appreciate. Indeed, the daughter begins her letter with a paragraph in Martinican Creole, and then switches to French. All of this leads the mother to her ultimate realization about her identity and past: "Je ne guérirai pas de mon histoire. C'est mon tatouage, l'eczéma de mes ancêtres. Mais c'est aussi ce qui fait que je suis moi. C'est ma force secrète" (237).