Silence Of The Chagos

Based on a true, still-unfolding story, Silence of the Chagos is a powerful exploration of cultural identity, the concept of home, and above all the neverending desire for justice. Shenaz Patel draws on the lives of exiled Chagossians in this tragic example of 20th century political oppression. Every afternoon a woman in a red headscarf walks to the end of the quay and looks out over the water, fixing her gaze “back there”: to Diego Garcia, one of the small islands forming the Chagos archipelago in the Indian Ocean. With no explanation, no forewarning, and only an hour to pack their belongings, the Chagossians are deported to Mauritius. Officials tell her that the island is “closed”— there is no going back for any of them. Charlesia longs for life on Diego Garcia, where the days were spent working on a coconut plantation; the nights dancing to sega music. As she struggles to come to terms with her new reality, Charlesia crosses paths with Désiré, a young man born on the one-way journey to Mauritius. Désiré has never set foot on Diego Garcia, but as Charlesia unfolds the dramatic story of his people, he learns of the home he never knew and the disrupted future of his people. With the sovereignty of Chagos currently being debated on an international judiciary level, Silence of the Chagos is an important and timely examination of the rights of individuals in the face of governmental corruption. Praise for Silence of the Chagos: “Some twenty years ago, I was struck by a photo showing barefoot women on the road facing the armed police. They were Chagossian women protesting in Mauritius with astonishing determination.” This photo, which she's never forgotten, is the inspiration for the Mauritian novelist and journalist Shenaz Patel's third book. Mingling various voice, Patel describes, in a bitter, clear-cut style, the tragedy of the inhabitants of the Chagos, those coral islands of the Indian Ocean that were turned into an American military base and whose inhabitants had been banished to Mauritius between 1967 and 1972. With a prose that seeps and stings, and a sharp sensibility, Shenaz Patel breathes life into the painful nostalgia, the lingering memories, and the eternal incomprehension of these expelled from a string of lost islands.” —Le Monde “This novel has two voices, those of Charlesia and Désiré, both of whom are foreigners, natives of the Chagos archipelago, living in exile in Mauritius, an island that is a paradise for some but a hell for them. The Chagos are an archipelago that would have been hidden in the depths of the Indian Ocean, had Americans not built a military base to bombard other countries. Charlesia and Désiré live and breathe; the Mauritian writer Shenaz Patel introduces us to them and gives them voice again.” —Libération “From scenes of daily life to the horrors of forced exile, through the grief of deculturation and the experience of an impossible identity, Patel interrogates the relationship between political expediency and its all-too-human consequences, between the abstract needs of international security and the concrete needs of the individual, and above all between the rich and the poor.” —L'Express

Le gardien du port connaît bien Charlesia. Elle passe régulièrement devant sa guérite et scrute l'horizon, dans l'attente vaine d'un bateau qui la ramènera chez elle. Diego Garcia, son île natale, n'est plus qu'un souvenir, celui d'une vie simple, rythmée par la production du coprah, les jeux des enfants, le seraz de poisson-banane et le séga du samedi soir. Depuis des années, Charlesia se heurte aux questions que lui pose un jeune homme. Désiré pourrait être son fils. Confronté au mystère de sa naissance, il découvre peu à peu le drame de ses parents, et de son entourage. Le Silence des Chagos, basé sur une histoire vraie, est un des rares livres à explorer cette tragédie méconnue : le drame intérieur des Chagossiens, leur déportation et leur existence de déracinés à l'île Maurice, depuis que Diego Garcia est devenue une base militaire américaine à la fin des années 1960. Édition augmentée d'une postface inédite de l'auteur.

This issue of Profession contains Sidonie Smith's introduction to her Presidential Forum (held at the 2011 MLA convention) and the essays of forum participants Hillary Chute, Marianne Hirsch, Leigh Gilmore, Craig Howes, Françoise Lionnet, Nancy K. Miller, David Palumbo-Liu, Brian Rotman, Leo Spitzer, Robert Warrior, and Gillian L. Whitlock. The issue also features a section on evaluating digital scholarship. Introduced by Susan Schreibman, Laura Mandell, and Stephen Olsen, the section includes essays by Steve Anderson, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Jerome McGann, Tara McPherson, Bethany Nowviskie, and Geoffrey Rockwell. The issue's other essays are by Reed Way Dasenbrock, Gillian Gane, Laurie Grobman, Joyce Kinkead, David Porter, and Richard Yarborough. The issue concludes with two sets of MLA guidelines--on professional employment practices for non-tenure-track faculty members and on evaluating translations as scholarship--and a listing of reports, surveys, statements, and other resources recently added to the MLA Web site.

Shenaz Patels Roman zeichnet das Schicksal der Chagossianer nach, einer Volksgruppe, die auf den Inseln des Chagos-Archipels im Indischen Ozean lebte, bis sie ab Mitte der 1960er Jahre von dort vertrieben wurde. Die Chagos-Inseln gehören noch zum britischen Territorium und wurden für 50 Jahre an die USA verpachtet, die dort eine Militärbasis errichtet haben. Von hier wurden und werden Luftangriffe auf den Irak und Afghanistan geflogen. Die Inselbewohner hat man zwangsumgesiedelt – die meisten landeten in Slums in der mauritischen Hauptstadt Port Louis. Die Vertriebenen kämpfen bis heute vor Gericht vergeblich um ihre Rückkehr. Der Roman zeigt aus verschiedenen Perspektiven die Schicksale mehrerer Chagossianer. Da ist Charlesia, die mit ihrer Familie nach Mauritius fährt, da ihr Mann im Krankenhaus behandelt werden muß, und plötzlich und ohne jede Information nicht mehr auf ihre geliebte Insel Diego Garcia zurückkehren kann. Da ist Tony, ein Hafenarbeiter auf Mauritius, der Charlesia immer wieder am Kai stehen sieht, sehnsüchtig aufs Meer starrend. Da ist Désiré, der nach der Verschleppung seiner Mutter auf der Schiffsreise nach Mauritius geboren wird und sich zwischen den Welten fühlt. Und da ist der Schiffskapitän, der Gewissensbisse hat, weil er die Inselbewohner gegen deren Willen wegbrachte, nachdem er jahrelang mit Lebensmittellieferungen zu der isolierten und weitgehend unberührten Insel gekommen war. Die Frage, was es bedeutet, heimatlos und entwurzelt zu sein, ist heute aktueller denn je. Der Roman spürt sensibel den verschiedenen Varianten des Unrechts nach, das den Chagossianern vor rund 50 Jahren widerfahren ist. Frankreich war der Ehrengast der Frankfurter Buchmesse 2017

This book analyses how the idea – or the problem - of belonging is articulated in a range of contemporary francophone Mauritian novels. Waters explores how forms of affective belonging intersect with the exclusionary ‘politics of belonging’ in novels by Nathacha Appanah, Ananda Devi, Shenaz Patel, Bertrand de Robillard, Amal Sewtohul and Carl de Souza.