SOURCE: INDIANEXPRESS

Adept at novels, essays and plays, Condé influenced many generations of writers through her work on the African diaspora

Twice in her life, upon approaching her mother for encouragement about her writing, Maryse Condé faced opposition. The first time, when she was a teenager, she was accused of inventing a “load of lies” – a painful earful for any budding fictioneer – and the second time, a few years later, in response to her triumphant claim that she would one day write as powerfully as Emily Bronte: “What are you talking about? People like us don’t write!” Conde was confused. “What did (my mother) mean by people like us?” she writes in a 2019 New York Review piece. “Women? Blacks? Inhabitants of small, unimportant islands?”