The Bossale Civilisation: Reflections on the Oral Literature of Guadeloupe and Martinique

The Bossale Civilisation, first published in 1978, is as relevant today as when it first appeared. It illumines History as to its calculated falsehoods, and the persistence, through care and attentiveness, of what can only be qualified as the Truth. The Bossale is the African slave deported by the Atlantic Slave Trade into the plantations of Martinique and Guadeloupe, and who, from out ofhis and her struggles, sufferings and hopes, will create an entire oral literature.It is through this oral literature that Maryse Condé seeks to bring out the true face of her ancestors: the Bossales.