[Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention.] Grashina Gabelmann (The Creative Independent) interviews Isis Labeau-Caberia in “The Conversation: Learning to Be Yourself,” about writing about academic topics creatively, not forcing a certain path, growing through burnout, and sustaining faith in your purpose. Here are some excerpts from the interview:
Isis Labeau-Caberia is a French-Martinican writer, freelance researcher in Afro-Caribbean history, and podcaster. Her debut novel, Prophecy of the Serpent Sisters (Slalom Editions), is a YA historical/Afrofuturistic fiction and will be released in France in September 2022.
What is it that you do?
I am a Martinican (Caribbean French) writer, podcaster and freelance researcher. My work focuses on the colonial and postcolonial history of the Caribbean, through the lens of gender, queerness and resistance. My reflection is rooted in a diasporic, transatlantic framework, meaning it radiates towards Europe, West/Central Africa, South Asia.
In both my podcast and my upcoming historical novel, I try to articulate historical and sociological reflections in a way that is digestible by/aimed at my communities of affiliation – Caribbean people, French POC, Afro and POC women and queer. Popularizing academic work doesn’t have to come at the expense of quality: for me, it doesn’t mean “lowering” the rigor of my work, but rather being very intentional about making what I do accessible to people outside the little bubble academic. There is much to be said for the hegemony of Western academic institutions and the gatekeeping they perpetuate.
In my work, this attempt at subversion appears both in the subjects I write about (history related to today’s struggles for emancipation and decolonization) and in the formats I choose. It requires rethinking what we consider “legitimate” sources of knowledge and support for its dissemination. Especially as a black woman thinker, writing from a postcolonial society, I believe it is inherently political to challenge the dichotomy between objectivity and subjectivity. Writing about academic subjects, leaving room for radical creativity, imagination, poetic sensibility and subjective perspectives.
What was your path and your background to get to where you are now?
It’s funny, because ever since I was a kid, I knew I wanted to be a writer. I was also very interested in research. Of course I didn’t have the words for it at the time, but I was obsessed with collecting stories from the past and connecting them to the present. I would spend long afternoons at my grandmother’s house, pestering her with questions about her youth, her family history, and life in colonial Martinique during the 1930s. I would take extensive notes, even recording it with my father’s old camera mine. I think I became aware very early on of the incredible value of the stories of the “little people” within the official “big” History – what the grown-up ISIS today would refer to as the “history from below” of the subaltern people . But even though it was an early call, it’s been such a long road for me to get to a point where I can live it fully.
I left Martinique at the age of 18 to pursue my undergraduate studies at Sciences Po Paris, a French university for political and social sciences. I also studied the sociology of race and gender for a year at Columbia University in New York when I was 20 years old. It was the most stimulating, liberating, and intellectually empowering time of my life, as well as a strong confirmation that, “Yes. That’s what I’m meant to do.” [. . .]
I ended up going to law school and then worked for almost three years at a law firm that specialized in workplace discrimination cases. As a young Black Caribbean woman afforded the privilege of elite higher education, I felt overwhelmed by the mountain of systemic injustices that I had a “duty” to combat. I wanted to make a “real” impact and was oppressed by the belief that “writing is not enough.” I thought it would be a waste of all the opportunities ahead of me that very few people who looked like me had access to. So for me, my late twenties have been a journey of learning that it’s not because I “can” I “should.” It’s about deconstructing my notion of what “impact” might look like and convincing myself of the radical potential of my purpose: the radical potential of ideas and stories. [. . .]
For the full interview see https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/writer-isis-labeau-caberia-on-learning-to-be-yourself
