Too Black to Be French

Isabelle Boni-Claverie (Author) Isabelle Boni-Claverie is a French filmmaker, screenwriter, and author. At eighteen, she won second prize for the Young Francophone Writer Award for her first novel, La Grande Dévoreuse. In 2005, Danny Glover asked her to adapt Valérie Tong Cuong's novel, Où je suis, into the screenplay Heart of Blackness. She has since written numerous television dramas and series, including the comedy Sex, Okra and Salted Butter (ARTE), Seconde Chance (TF1), Coeur Océan (France 2), and Plus Belle La Vie (France 3), the most watched TV series in France. Two of her first short films, Pour la nuit and Le Génie d'Abou won international awards. Broadcast for the first time on the Franco-German television channel ARTE in 2015, her documentary Too Black to Be French? was a hit both with audiences and the media and screened internationally. She has produced and cowritten a documentary about diversity at the Paris Opera that will air on ARTE this year.Kaiama Glover (Foreword By) Kaiama L. Glover is Ann Whitney Olin Professor of French and Africana Studies at Barnard College. She is the author of A Regarded Self: Caribbean Womanhood and the Ethics of Disorderly Being (2020) and Haiti Unbound: A Spiralist Challenge to the Postcolonial Canon (2010).Joshua David Jordan (Translator) Joshua David Jordan is Senior Lecturer in French at Fordham University. He has translated works by Etienne Balibar, Jean Hatzfeld, and David Lapoujade and is a two-time winner of the French Voices Award.

• Foreword by Kaiama L. Glover viiAcknowledgments xiii1. If Only You'd Been Lighter 12. A Black Princess and White Nannies 53. You Will Play Balthazar, My Dear 114. Does Class Erase Race? 185. A "Little French Girl" in Ivory Coast 276. My Grandfather, Alphonse Boni 337. Slavery and the Holocaust: Why I Am a Humanist 448. When My Grandmother Married a Black Man 549. An "African Girl" in Bordeaux 6410. What Color Is the French Language? 7711. Why Race Trumps Class 8312. Alphonse and Rose-Marie: A Mixed-Race Couple in the Colonies 8813. A Little Story About Discrimination 9714. My First Black Role Models 10315. The Adventure of Revue Noire 11116. French "Integration" 12117. Where Are You From? 12718. Coming Out of the Race Closet 13419. Good Hair 14120. Alphonse's Dilemmas 15621. Fault Lines 17322. French TV: Keeping Out the Color 18323. The White Norm 20124. Run, Black Man, Run! 21025. The Guerlain Affair 21526. The Three Fears 23027. On the Advantage of Being White 24028. In It Together 24529. That's a Wrap 257Notes 263