Languages and history
In order to understand Mayotte's relationship with French literature, it is essential to look back at its history, as complex as it is. Geographically, Mayotte is an archipelago located in the Indian Ocean made up of, among others, two main islands: Grande-Terre and Petite-Terre. Together with Grande Comore, Moheli and Anjouan, this group makes up a larger archipelago, the Comoros. Culturally, these territories constitute a real crossroads of civilizations, as much because of the successive waves of settlement as because they served as a stopover point, sometimes permanent, for merchants transiting between Africa and Madagascar. These vast influences continue to endure and to be heard in the various idioms still in use, but they are also at the origin of a particular culture, rich and unique, which is felt in the themes addressed in the literature. For all that, the (thorny) question of identity also arises, because by refusing the independence that the other Comorian islands will choose, by being linked to countries strongly marked by the process of decolonization, but by being, at the same time, dependent on a distant metropolis that did not always bother to give it its rightful place, Mayotte has found itself at the crossroads. This complex reality, if only from a linguistic, religious or societal point of view, is strewn with doubts, questions, sometimes with irony or a certain violence. It constitutes a dense material that the authors are constantly deconstructing, and their voices are becoming more and more numerous.
The first document in French has nothing literary about it, since it is the treaty, ratified in 1843, by which the Sultan Andriantsoly sold Mayotte to France in exchange for a life annuity. Of course, before that, the archipelago had a strong oral tradition, ancient tales, pure heritage of the links with Madagascar and Africa, but also a corpus of written texts, generally using the Arabic alphabet, among these are texts by Cadi Omar ben Aboubacar(Chronique arabe de Maore, 1865), Prince Saïd Omar el Masella(L'Histoire de la possession de Mayotte, 1875) and Sheikh Mkadara ben Mohamed(Chronique de Mtsamboro, 1931). In the twentieth century, the question of a definitive attachment to the hexagon was raised through several referendums - to the great displeasure of the Union of Comoros, which claimed sovereignty after having itself detached from French authority. It was ratified in 2011 when the archipelago officially became an overseas department, which did little to solve the many problems facing the territory: economic crisis, shortages, social movements, illegal immigration, etc. Illiteracy is another major concern: for a long time confined to madrassas (Koranic schools), schooling is adapting to the slow pace of the creation of structures, the first French college dates only from 1980... It is on this soil, which at first glance is not very fertile, that at least three writers imposed themselves: Nassur Attoumani, born in Moroni (Comoros) in 1954 but settled in Mayotte, Abdou Salam Baco and Alain-Kamal Martial, both from Mzouazia, which saw them born respectively in 1965 and 1976.A top three..
Nassur Attoumani is undoubtedly the most famous of the Maorean authors; his work has been the subject of theses, notably by Christophe Cosker, who published at the Presses Universitaires Indianocéaniques: Nassur Attoumani en images, pour une poétique de l'image ironique( Nassur Attoumani in images, for a poetics of ironic images), 2020; Lecteurs de Nassur Attoumani: enjeux d'une réception francophone dans l'océan Indien( Readers of Nassur Attoumani: issues of a Francophone reception in the Indian Ocean), 2021. It must be admitted that the writer seems to enjoy all the talents and that he accumulates hats: musician, playwright, novelist, he also writes for young people and does not hesitate to be satirical when he adapts Molière's Tartuffe in the form of a comic strip with an evocative title, Le Turban et la Capote. In 1989, he founded a theater company, M'kakamba (Rainbow), and staged his first play,The Polygamist's Daughter, the same year. Thus, in Mon mari est plus qu'un fou : c'est un homme (Naïve, 2006, Grand Prix littéraire de l'océan Indien), and in Tonton ! rends-moi ma virginité... (Orphie, 2015), he does not hesitate to denounce domestic violence and incest. Nassur Attoumani also invokes the history of his archipelago. Thus, in the essay Mayotte: identité bafouée (L'Harmattan, 2013), he becomes an ethnologist by delivering traditional tales and an anthropologist by trying to explain the socio-cultural mutation that his people are experiencing, while in the novel Nerf de bœuf (L'Harmattan, 2001) he addresses the issue of slavery. Similarly, in one of his best-known texts, Le Calvaire des baobabs, he returns to the 1940s and the decisive encounter between a Mahorese child and a white man. Finally, in 2015 he signed his first collection of poetry, Requiem pour un nègre
, published by Ngo de Libreville, again urging his reader not to forget the past.No less political, just as much of a music lover, and although younger than Attoumani, Abdou Salam Baco can boast of having written the first French-speaking novel in Mauritania with Brûlante est ma terre (L'Harmattan, 1991), a text with strong autobiographical overtones. It is once again the difficult confrontation between natives and metropolitans that is portrayed, and although the book ends with a false prophecy - Mayotte will become a French department - it has lost little of its interest. Two years later, the author signed Dans un cri silencieux with the same publisher, and then he took back his real name (Abdou Mambo Baco) to continue a work that never ceases to question colonization and to be committed, especially with Si longue que soit la nuit
... (Menaibuc editions, 2013) which closes his trilogy. The next generation seems to be assured thanks to Alain-Kamal Martial who makes the link between Mayotte, where he grew up, and the metropolis where he passed a DEA in Literature before joining the LERTA (Laboratory of Theatrical Studies and Research of Avignon). His reputation extends far beyond France, as his plays have been performed in some twenty countries, one of the most representative being perhaps 17 million burials for a national corpse, translated into Portuguese by the writer Mia Couto and performed at the Teatro Avenida in Maputo, Mozambique. If not seen on stage, some of her works are also available in print, such as Zakia Madi: la chatouilleuse (L'Harmattan, 2004) which, as its name suggests, takes as its heroine one of the women who fought in the late 1960s for Mayotte to join France, or Papa m'a suicideR (Avant-scène théâtre, 2006) which portrays the disappearance of a young girl abused by her father. In 2007, Les Veuves toured internationally.... and a dynamic new generation
To this trio, we should obviously add the name of Nassuf Djailani. Born in Mayotte in 1981, he continued his schooling in France where he resides, which does not prevent him from worrying about the fate of his archipelago. These concerns and his mestizo values inspired him to write a collection of poems, Naître ici, published in 2019 by the beautiful Bruno Doucet Editions and winner of the Fetkann Maryse Condé Prize in 2020. These texts represent only the tip of the iceberg, Nassuf Djailani is indeed the author of a dozen titles published by L'Harmattan (Se résoudre à filer vers le Sud, 2012), at Passage(s) (Bob, 2016) and especially at Komedit (Roucoulement, 2013, Comorian Vertigo, 2017, etc.). His sumptuously titled collection of short stories, L'Irrésistible nécessité de mordre dans une mangue
(2020), offers the rare chance to discover Mayotte through his eyes. This beautiful momentum taken by the literature of Mayotte seems to be confirmed by the creation of a Regional Agency for books and reading in 2015, which had initiated a residency for youth authors, but also by the launch in 2017 of a Book Fair and, in 2019, by the birth of a Club of writers and friends of books (CEAL) chaired by Soulaimana Noussoura. In addition, reference works are beginning to appear, such as Les Littératures francophones de l'archipel des Comores (Classiques Garnier), which gives pride of place to Mayotte and counts among its contributors Linda Rasoamanana, Buata B. Malela or Rémi A. Tchokothe, and several websites follow the literary news closely, such as www.revueprojectiles.com or the blog www.muzdalifahouse.com. In conclusion, while hoping that the health crisis does not slow down good will and that the efforts undertaken to bring the new generation to writing succeed, it is in any case appreciable to note that women are taking up the pen, as proven by the contest "Écrire au féminin" (Writing for Women) co-organized in 2020 by the DLLP (Direction du livre et de la lecture publique) and the Délégation régionale des droits des femmes (Regional Delegation of Women's Rights). If strangely the winner (Yasmina Aouny, with La Cause) applied under a male pseudonym (Abdoul Fouadi), this cannot make us forget that since the beginning of the 2000s, women have taken up the fight to denounce the violence of which they are victims, which was first started by men. Thus, generally under the cover of fictions, they do not hesitate any more to deliver their history, granting it a universal range and making themselves the spokesmen of the feminist cause. For example, Laoura Ahmed has written a story(Le Contenu de la fiole, published by Société des écrivains, 2006) and a thesis on customary law in marriage(La Construction d'un système juridique), Zahara Silahi, Rihana Hamidouna, Séline Soula, Rozette Yssouf, etc.
