2023-04-23 15:28:56
Dad ran the bets
de Louise Meriwether
Translated from the American by Romaric Vinet-Kammerer
Philippe Rey, 240 pages, 21 €
When Francie drinks tea, it’s clear and it’s in a chipped cup. When she goes to bed, it’s on the sofa in the living room, under an old coat that lets her feet stick out. When his mother sends him to “the chubby butcher”, he has to go behind the counter. It’s that Mr. Morristein, who then gratifies her with two soup bones for the price of one, wants to see the “the lovely young girl she is becoming”. Same right of seigneur at Max le boulanger – “He also gave me free buns when he found a way to grope me”.
The Awakening of a Black Consciousness During the Great Depression
This is just a sample of the miseries, by turns sordid, revolting or tragic, that walled in the daily life of Francie, 12, the youngest of a black family in Harlem in 1934. In a first-person account inspired by her childhood, Louise Meriwether, who will be a hundred years old in May, lets us see them, and even experience them, through the eyes of his touching heroine. A spirit without filter which, at first candid, only knows how to submit, contenting itself with finding “unpleasant” the gestures of its predators and normal “connect the cables”, in the evening, in the family kitchen, to divert electricity. But faced with the repeated humiliations of her family, skinny Francie forges her indignation. She discovers inner resistance, the freedom to say no.
For the first time translated into French since its publication in the United States in 1970, where it serves as a classic, Dad ran the bets says the awakening of a black conscience to the unbearable of his condition at the critical times of the “great depression”. But he does not plead, analyze or demonstrate. He only tells. A novel, quite simply, and that is so much. The scathing accuracy of the author, her few words, her orality are enough to strike us.
Far better than a manifesto, they bring us to grips with the vicissitudes of Harlem nearly a century ago. Suddenly, everything comes alive. The street, brutal and vibrant, where lives are played out as much as in homes, Francie’s father, proud of not having any of his three children in prison, the bets, which make him dream rather than live the family, his mother, who spends her time doing laundry – “With all this activity, we should have been super clean but, who knows why, we weren’t”.
A place for grace
Also, it’s not just the worst. In the walled-in life of Francie, grace knows how to find a place. Louise Meriwether did not write a lament, but a text punctured by a fresh, vital joy that arises without warning. When the family celebrates the school medal of the eldest son, or when the father, at the piano, launches into a foxtrot for all the neighbors who have come to celebrate his victory in the lottery (a handful of dollars only). “Sure we had a good time”, Francie then swears. So good that that night she won’t apply the motherly technique of pushing the sofa away from the wall to protect herself from bed bugs. that they « s’empiffrent, she says to herself. Everyone deserves a little something now and then, even those bloodsucking insects.” Magnanimous.
#gaps #joy #sidewalks #Harlem