Mary Jean Green’s scientific contributions

In Le Cœur à rire et à pleurer (1999), Maryse Condé’s first admittedly autobiographical work, there appears a photograph of a grandmother, but the woman it pictures remains a mysterious presence. It is to the life of this unknown grandmother that Condé devotes her attention in her 2006 publication, Victoire, les saveurs et les mots. In understanding the life of this maternal grandmother, she hopes to learn more about her own enigmatic mother, and thus about herself. Condé’s text is a reconstitution of the life of Victoire Élodie Pridal, a household servant, and of the time in which she lived, when the black population of Guadeloupe was finally able to assert its right to education and political power. It is also a work of imagination, as the narrator imagines her unknown grandmother's life, comparing her own ability as a writer to the creative imagination displayed by Victoire in her legendary creole cuisine.