In the early 1960s, Françoise Ega, a cultural and labor activist born in Martinique, kept a diary in which she detailed her work as a maid, mother, and writer. The diary—published after her death in 1976, under the title Notes to a Black Woman—reveals Ega’s literary eye and revolutionary spirit, finding balm in strong, cold winds and throwing barbs at her privileged employers. (Emma Ramadan vivifies Ega’s wit with her translation.) May every oppressor meet their diarist.
I seem strange to her, it makes her nervous and a little mean. She asks me:
“Have you finished the vestibule?”
“Yes, Madame.”
That’s the signal; she takes a dusty rug and starts to shake it out in the very place that I’ve just made nice and shiny! So then I have to start all over again. If I tell my husband he’ll yell, “Stay home!” and break my moped. If I stayed home I would never be able to see just how far human stupidity goes.
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