An Excerpt of Marie Léticée’s Camille’s Lakou, with a Translator’s Note

Presented here are three chapters from Marie Léticée’s Camille’s Lakou, translated from her 2016 novel Moun Lakou. The book presents a double-protagonist coming-of-age story in which the narrator relates her autobiographical tale to a younger character facing crises similar to those of the narrator and the narrator’s single-parent mother. The excerpted chapters all come from the narrator Camille’s embedded tale and describe scenes of the impoverished, urban, Guadeloupean 1960s milieu from which the narrator emerged. One reads about water management, public transportation, the bustle of outdoor markets, and the slapstick modernity of an imported French department store, as well as an endearing but doomed communal use of toilets known as caca à deux. The chapters are followed by a translator’s note offering biographical and literary historical context for both the author and text, with a particular focus on the lakou, or yard, as a Guadeloupean and region-wide social formation. The note also examines the language spectrum employed in the original and explores decisions about how to render the original in English.