Mon livre remporte ce prestigieux prix (dans la belle traduction de Nancy Carlson), quelle belle surprise ! As a reminder: « The Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize is for book-length literary translations into English from any living European language. It aims to honour the craft of translation, and to recognise its cultural importance. It was founded by Lord Weidenfeld and is supported by New College, The Queen’s College, and St Anne’s College, Oxford ».
It has been a long voyage…
Many know this tedious pioneering path and I remember them on this crew archipelizing my fragments of histories, cultures and memories, as from 1989, when I wrote Cargo Hold in French. It was then awarded ex-aequo a prize in Mauritius, headed by Nobel Prize winner Jean-Marie Le Clézio. In the French sphere the book was short-listed for the Henri Queffélec award. However, while it remains a landmark in Francophone literature, I believe the book was really meant for an Anglophone readership and the Oxford-Weidenfeld award is a proof of this. A book really conveys a series of codes and substrates that resonates with greater and deeper gestalt within the history conveyed by a particular language, whether or not one also deconstructs it in the process.
This recognition as the best translated work in English language also highlights the book’s originality and pioneering work (1992) in the fields of Indentureship. It devised archipelagic and porous perspectives through an oceanic-centred construction challenging terracentric historiographies. When I wrote it in 1989, I redefined exilic literature, diasporic binary thematics, widening creolization praxis through the Indias, seen as a corallian poetics. Its poetology enabled me to develop inclusive indenture and other complex theorizations in the fields of humanities.
As I opened to other pages of servitude through the jahaji bhai/behen construction, Cargo Hold devised a humanism of diversity in the Global South, articulating diverse mental and physical geographies that are still unravelling…
For this recognition, conveyed by Nancy’s translation:
I say many thanks to my deceased parents, who gave me so much, specially all those languages, cuisines, visions that made the writer and person I am. My father was from Trinidad and my mother born in Mauritius, from Bengal and South Asian ancestry.
I wish to thank my son Camil Torabully who has been a constant souce of inspiration and visions to me. I wish to dedicate this prize to him and his lovely wife Nabilah, and my brother Iqbal. They wed in Singapore during the covid last year. And I could not attend their wedding ceremony. May this modest gift express tonnes of Love to them.
I also thank the Ameena Gafoor Institute of Indentured Studies for having believed in my theoretical developments and creative approach to promote indentureship in mes Indes originales. The AGI welcomed another definition of creolization, and opening fluid paradigms in diasporic Studies. I am privileged to be one of their honorary patrons.
Its founder, David Dabydeen fully understood this methodology stemming from the original kala pani aesthetics, inclusive indenture and complex decoding of History from an oceanic perspective. He had already inscribed coolitude studies at Warwick University some 15 years ago. For him, « coolitude enabled the coolie to enter the realm of ideas ».
I have a thought for the Aapravasi Ghat dream team when we devised policies some 18 years ago, namely Raju Mohit and Mahen Utchanah, who invited me regularly to pool ideas and concepts to open this UNESCO site on diversities, namely, Le Morne, for resistance to slavery.
I also thank UNESCO, namely Doudou Diène and Moussa Ali Iyé, both former directors of the Slave Route for having been my companions in this crossing of signs of inclusive indentureship. Indeed, in 2016, the philosophical basis of coolitude impregnated the constitution of the International Indentured Labour Route Project, which we initiated.
All these elements are intrinsically linked to the history of this book.
I have another special thought for Marina Carter with whom I co-authored Coolitude 1 and 2 anthologies (the second one in April 21). I am grateful to the contributors of these anthologies and prior writers who have engaged with coolitude.
Along this path, without mentioning all (may they excuse me for this, but they remain in the memory of this voyage), I will mention my brother Professor Otmar Ette L. Roopnarine, S. Peerthum, C. Uteem, ex-president of the Republic of Mauritius, Dr N. Ramgoolam, R. Cornevin, S. Dhanjee, D. Menon, N. Wickramasinghe, Abdel Aziz Sekkat, P. Venkatasamy, C. Cuniah, N. Mahabir, M. Goodhary, Véronique Bragard, R. Bannerjee, K. Mahabir, Jennifer Pelage, R. Maharaj, A. Kumar, Raouf Oderuth, with whom the Coolitude series is an ongoing reality, A. Gosine, C. Ballengee, B. Govinden, Michel Narayaninsamy, C. Vittori, l’éditeur réunionnais de Cale d’étoiles-Coolitude and other persons I met in my multiple landscapes of writing…
I also thank all those who refered to coolitude in their academic/artistic work and beyond.
I can add that after more than three decades, ‘Cargo Hold of Stars’, with the great translation of Nancy is about to explore new horizons…
Other texts are on the way.
This prize, indeed, constitutes an encouraging landmark and will fuel more crossing of signs.
Merci and mersi, thank you, xiexie, meherban, shoukran and shukria to ALL the crew of CARGO HOLD OF STARS, capable of « agrandizing the continents of Mankind » and charting new archipelagos. Between stars, wrecks and creative geographies, is a vast expanse of Love…
THANK YOU. I will definitely sow more fragments along the archipelagos of the Indias or les Indes…
TO END: Merci encore à Nancy Carlson et Naveen Kishore pour avoir aiguillé le bateau coolitude dans le monde anglophone.
LAST BUT NOT LEAST, je n’oublie pas mes contacts authentiques sur les réseaux sociaux, merci pour votre soutien…
Et merci au jury de Oxford-Weidenfeld award pour son choix qui honore notre travail!
As a token, I wish to share this fragment from CARGO HOLD OF STARS-COOLITUDE with you:
“Some birds
watch us dream
others search
the sky
and prefer wider windows”…
A l’appel de mes archipels, notre nef a appareillé en d’infinies mers d’histoires et de mémoires…
Coolitude belongs to all voiceless peoples, unvoiced narratives, and all oppressed minorities of the world. It brings the grandeur of the coolie to the forefront in a world where some people are still ashamed of their past.