Black Shack Alley – Book & Movie Review
Student -- 00023024
Photo courtesy: Gamma, Camera Press London
accessed at http://www.caribbean-beat.com/issue-82/joseph-zobel-voice-martinique
Joseph Zobel, 26 April 1915 – 18 June 2006
It was into a life of extreme deprivation and hardship that Joseph Zobel was born on 26 April,
1915, in the southern town of Rivière-Salée, Martinique. His mother was a wet nurse to the white
Des Grottes family, owners of the sugarcane plantation where his father also worked; and so the
young Joseph was looked after by his grandmother, herself employed to cut down weeds around
the sugarcane fields. He attended the village school and excelled, being admitted to Fort-deFrance’s prestigious Lycée Schoelcher, the only poor black pupil among the capital’s lightskinned middle-class children. Thanks to the extraordinary sacrifices of his mother and
grandmother, Zobel passed his baccalauréat and, unable to afford university in France, took a
local government job before being offered a supervisor’s post at the Lycée Schoelcher in 1938.
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The Second World War (1939 – 1945) saw Martinique ruled by the pro-Vichy Admiral Robert,
and undergoing a period of hardship and repression as the US Navy had blockaded the island. It
was at this time that Joseph Zobel began to write: short stories, articles, and autobiographical
pieces, mostly with an emphasis on his rural childhood and current social issues. His first novel,
Diab’la, (written in 1942) a socially conscious tale of rural poverty, was summarily banned by
the Vichy authorities as subversive. When they fell Zobel was appointed press officer to the new
Gaullist governor; and with the new regime after the end of the war he got Diab’la published in
1946. Diab’la tells the story of a sugar cane plantation worker freeing himself from colonial
exploitation by creating a garden in a fishermen's village of Southern Martinique; and, according
to critiques, can be considered similar to Jacques Roumains’ Masters of the Dew.
Joseph Zobel left Martinique in 1946 (after the war ended). He studied ethnology and drama
studies at the Sorbonne and worked at a school in Fontainebleau, while at the same time
writing La Rue Case Nègres, (translated from the French as Black Shack Alley) which was finally
published in 1950, having been turned down by Parisian publishers Julliard, Albin Michel, and
La Table Ronde as being too “Creole”. Published by Jean Froissard (Paris), it won the Prix des
Lecteurs the same year.
Joseph Zobel relocated to South Africa by 1957. He has also published Si la mer n’était pas
bleue (1982) and Badara (aka Mas Badara, 1983), based on his life there. He had a notable
impact in the cultural life of French-speaking West Africa as a public radio producer. Also a
noted poet and a gifted sculptor, Joseph Zobel retired in a small village of Southern France by
1974 and died in 2006.
Some other works by Joseph Zobel
Diab’la (1946; written 1942)
Laghia de la mort (1946)
La Rue Cases-Nègres (1950)
La Fête à Paris (1953)
Le Soleil partagé (1964)
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Les Mains pleines d'oiseaux (1978)
Quand la neige aura fondu (1979)
Si la mer n’était pas bleue (1982)
Mas Badara (1983)
Review of Black Shack Alley
Photo accessed through www.openlibrary.org
This semi-autobiographical novel is an account of a young boy raised by his grandmother in
post-slavery, but still sugarcane plantation-based, Martinique. The struggles of the impoverished
plantation workers and the ambitions of a loving grandmother and mother who work hard to put
the main character through school are the core subject of the novel, which also describes life in a
colonial society. Joseph Zobel appears as the narrator and protagonist José, while his indomitable
grandmother, M’man Tine, is herself. Set in the early 1900s, the novel traces Joseph Zobel’s
real-life experiences of hunger and discrimination, but also the intelligence and ambition that
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allowed him to break though the island’s class and colour barriers, escaping the plantation
system through education.
The physical and economic hardships suffered by the estate workers, including M’man Tine, and
all the narrator’s childhood friends recall the harsh conditions of the plantation system which, in
former centuries, exploited the labour of their enslaved ancestors. However, the child's
enthusiasm for the small pleasures of rural life provides a counterpoint to the theme of
unremitting, ill-rewarded toil. As in many real West Indian households, the grandmother is the
source of love, support, and ambition, motivating the boy towards the escape route of education,
scholarships and social mobility. The value of education is brought home to the reader when José
realizes that without a Certificat d’Etudes Primaires (Certificate at the end of primary schooling)
“we would fall in the ‘petites-bandes’ (young workers) and all the sacrifices of our parents
would have been in vain.”.
Both M’man Tine and her daughter Délia prove to be essential in the upbringing of José, with
M’man Tine working feverously in the cane-fields, and Délia working for the béké (local white)
in order to enable her son to live a life outside that of the common social structure of black
sugarcane plantation workers. Thanks to the extraordinary sacrifices of his mother and
grandmother José is not made to join the ‘petites-bandes’ but is encouraged to enter school
instead and allowed to read and study by lamplight. He then passes the Certificat d’Etudes
Primaires, and enters into the secondary school on a quarter scholarship. José realizes the
opportunities that schooling provides to a young black boy during his first year in secondary
school; so much so that by his vacation at the end of his first year he says “M’man Tine’s room
was bulging with books: on the girders, on shelves I had put up everywhere.”
The novel also traces José’s progression from oral education via village life and a traditional
society to that of a “better future” via written literature. At the beginning of the novel, we see
many interactions between José and his “teacher” Médouze who uses riddles and stories as a way
of depicting the history of slavery and the economic relationship between blacks and the békés in
Martinique. Monsieur Médouze, the village elder and storyteller, is a quintessential
representation of oral tradition and the art of storytelling. Then José begins to go to school and
after receiving his Certificat d’Etudes Primaires, embarks on a journey that immerses him in a
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completely different world of teaching. Even his grandmother urges him to go to school; she tells
him that he “is finished picking up bad habits on the plantation. You’re going to school to get
some education in your head…” José begins to realize that his grandmother wishes to save him
from the cursed life of living on the plantation, and that the only way to “free himself” is to
receive an education via the French secondary school. As a result of having an “oral” past and
embracing a “literary” future, José creates a sort of hybridized identity; a personal culture. This
allows him to embrace the historical and ancestral teachings of Médouze and the practical
upbringing from M’man Tine; and to balance these along with ideals of the French educational
world.
Movie details
A Martinican reader named Euzhan Palcy (born 13 January 1958), at the age of fourteen read La
Rue Cases Nègres. The book was to stick in her mind as she studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and
then at the Louis Lumière School of Photography. With the backing of François Truffaut, she
was able, while still in her twenties, to raise the money for a film version of the novel she had
read some years earlier.
This came as a surprise to Zobel, who by now had moved to southern France for what he thought
would be a quiet retirement. He instinctively liked the young director and, according to Jenny,
trusted her for her integrity. The film was shot on a low budget (less than US$1 million) in
Martinique, with Zobel present for some of the production.
It was a huge hit, garnering rave reviews in the US, Europe, and the Caribbean itself. Garry
Cadenat as José and 76-year-old Darling Légitimus as M’man Tine won particular plaudits for
their performances, while the film itself was honoured at the César Awards (the French
equivalent to the Academy Awards), and the 1983 Cannes Film Festival. It was the first
Caribbean-made film based on a Caribbean novel, and the first full-length film made by a black
woman director.
The film took Martinique by storm. Jenny Zobel (Joseph’s daughter) recalls that the queues
outside the main cinema were longer and noisier than those for ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, which
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had been released shortly before. Here was a film that for the very first time showed Martinicans
their own island and their own people in a realistic fashion. Zobel became, rather belatedly,
something of a celebrity, invited to give talks and sign books. His work, not least La Rue Cases
Nègres, enjoyed a new lease of life, with new editions and fresh interest from a generation of
readers interested in “Third World” literature.
The film won over seventeen (17) international awards including the Venice Film Festival's
Silver Lion, as well as the Coppa Volpi (Volpi Cup) for Best Lead Actress Award (Darling
Legitimus). It also won the prestigious César Award (the French equivalent to Academy Award)
for best first feature film.
Conclusion
 Through this work Mr. Zobel has given his readers insights into the harsh life of the cane
plantation where José first lived with his grandmother, and the struggle of giving up one's
culture to become alienated but more successful in society.
 It beautifully illustrates the theory of marginalized and dominant cultures where those who
desire to succeed must first become alienated from their “creole/coolie/native” beginnings to
fit into the only acceptable society, which is that of the white colonial – in this case, the
French. This book is a reminder of the struggle for identity that has occurred in the past of
Martinique, and of every land where natives had to fight against other cultures.

The concept of pluralisation of communication is alive in José since he has:
1.
the historical and ancestral teachings via Monsieur Médouze, the village elder and
storyteller of Black Shack Alley,
2. the practical upbringing traditions and culture from M’man Tine – his maternal
grandmother, and
3. the ideals of the French educational system, the dominant culture in Martinique at the
time.
By the end of the novel, for his grandmother’s funeral, José has successfully integrated these and
created his personal identity.
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