Texaco (Romance)

Texaco is a novel of Patrick Chamoiseau published in 1992 and rewarded by the Prix Goncourt.

Its title refers to a district of Fort-de-France called thus because it was built around tanks belonging to the branch of the oil company Texaco.

This epopee of the creole conquest of the city, supplied with the memories of Hard Marie-Sophie, founder of Texaco, which testifies near the author-narrator, is organized around the Messianic idea of a Christ. This one is not other than a skilful town planner to decipher the organization of the creole district, which hiding place its richness and its complexity under outside unhealthy.

The memories of Hard Marie-Sophie, transcribed in splendid crossbred French of Creole, recall the History of the Martinique since the XIXe century through the " small histoire" of his/her Esternome father. They are completed on the account of its own combat against the " Béké of the pétroles" for the erection of the Texaco district, true symbol of the fight of the West-Indian blacks to leave the colonial night and to build their creole identity.

Extracts

One spoke about this horror. The mountain which shaved Saint-Pierre. There, my Esternome wanted nothing to describe. It deposited same obstinate silence that it cultivated its life lasting on the antans of slavery. He wanted to perhaps forget what he had seen while entering in-city. He had to succeed there because even when he wanted it, he could murumurer only of the things scattered, without much direction, but as terrible as a good description.
We met Nègres chestnuts. Their ajoupas mixed with the ferns. These were dark, absent from world also, different. They were, the time passing, remained in spirit in the country of before has them also we said: Freedom there, Freedom there. They looked us without part curiosity and disappeared flap. It was us to say: This freedom is a quite old business. Among these rebels of the first times, there was not for us not the least feeling. Not a friendly gleam. Not what to hope for another thing that a contempt. Then more one among us exclaimed in full rage: Yo Pa Ba nou' there fout'! Nou ki pran' there, They did not give it to us, we took it… Merci-Bondié: we had this history…
creole Quartier they is people who get along. one with the other, a hand washes the other, with two nails, one crushes the chip. It is the mutual aid which carries out. A District even exclaims like that. It is you to say.
Texaco remembers the set of forces between the box and the Large-box, the dwelling and the borough, the rural borough and the city. Fort-de-France, carried by the suburban ideal and the infernal blockhouse, had forgotten original balances a little. Texaco, like the other districts brought back the whole in bubble and draft for him. It is richness which the town planner must live.

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