Recall This Book

149 "I have not Finished...": Rokhaya Diallo on being Black, Muslim, and frequently interrupted (Emilie Diouf, JP)

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Emilie Diouf of Brandeis English, whose monograph on genocide and trauma is forthcoming, joins John to speak with the celebrated French journalist and activist Rokhaya Diallo. Diouf places Diallo within a transnational black intellectual tradition, founded in the interwar period in the Negritude movement; it was then that Paulette, Jeanne, and Anne Nardal’s literary salon became a meeting ground for African, Antillean, and African-American intellectuals, in the Parisian suburb of Clamart.

The three discuss the slowly changing racial climate in France and globally; how to counter ethnonationalism; as well as the currents of dissent or disdain that threaten to disrupt even leftwing political solidarity.

Mentioned in the Episode

  • Diallo has directed 8 documentaries among which her 2013 award winning film, Les Marches de la Liberté (Steps to Freedom) . She is also the author of many books, including most recently, La France tu l’aimes ou tu la fermes or France, Love it or Shut it, a collection of her major articles on the “struggle against oppression in France and globally.”
  • Ne reste pas à ta place, or Don’t try to fit in, (2016) and forthcoming book Le dictionnaire amoureux du féminisme or A Feminist Lover’s Dictionary (Editions Plon, March 2025)
  • Les Indivisibles: humor watchdog organization. Parody ceremony Y’a Bon Awards given to the “most racist sentences” every year.
  • Rokhaya Diallo
  • Coordination des Femmes Noir
  • Awa Thiam, La Parole aux Négresses
  • Afrofeminism
  • 2005 Clichy-sous-bois, a Paris banlieue, was the site of major unrest. Zyed Benna, 17, of Tunisian descent, and Bouna Traoré, 15, of Mauritanian descent, died tragically in a substation while trying to avoid detention.
  • The leading French TV station, TF1, made waves (and history) by hiring Harry Roselmack in 2016
  • Diallo’s own strong X/Twitter presence allows her to talk about being harassed—on Twitter/X itself!--and she has a podcast with Grace Ly, Kiffe Ta Race
  • Diallo’s film Les Marches de la Liberté 2013
  • From Paris to Ferguson ( De Paris à Ferguson : coupables d'être noirs) 2016
  • African Americans in Paris: James Baldwin and Josephine Baker in the 1930s, but also Angela Davis in the 1960s being perceived as an Algerian
  • Faiza Guene Just Like Tomorrow (Kif kif demain)

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    Recall This BookBy Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
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