{"id":56517,"date":"2018-05-30T02:31:14","date_gmt":"2018-05-30T02:31:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=56517"},"modified":"2018-05-30T02:32:29","modified_gmt":"2018-05-30T02:32:29","slug":"a-french-rwandan-rap-star-turned-novelist-from-burundi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=56517","title":{"rendered":"A French-Rwandan Rap Star Turned Novelist From Burundi"},"content":{"rendered":"

A French-Rwandan Rap Star Turned Novelist From Burundi<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2018-05-29<\/p>\n

Tobias Grey<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
\n\u201cSmall Country<\/a>,\u201d by Ga\u00ebl Faye<\/a>, is about a boy, living in Burundi<\/a> during the war between the Hutus<\/a> and Tutsis<\/a>, who loses his innocence in spite of desperately wanting to cling onto it.
\nElliott Verdier for The New York Times<\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

PARIS<\/a> \u2014 \u201cIt felt like an injustice to me,\u201d said the rapper and novelist Ga\u00ebl Faye<\/a>, about having to leave civil-war-torn Burundi<\/a> in 1995 to come live in France<\/a>. Mr. Faye, who was 13 at the time, had to contend with the shock of a new culture and moving with his younger sister into the cramped space of his mother\u2019s apartment in Versailles<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Months went by without unpacking his suitcases. \u201cWhen I went to school I used to take what I needed and put it back afterward,\u201d the 36-year-old author said in a recent interview in Paris. \u201cI\u2019d convinced myself that any day my father would ring up and tell us that the war had ended and we could come back. But the war ended up lasting until 2005 by which time I was an adult.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his first novel, \u201cSmall Country<\/a>\u201d \u2014 a huge hit in France when it was published in 2016 and where it sold 700,000 copies \u2014 Mr. Faye wrote with a rare and subtle yearning about his youthful escapades in and around Bujumbura<\/a>, the capital of Burundi. It has now been translated from French into English by Sarah Ardizzone<\/a> and is being released by Hogarth<\/a> on June 5.<\/p>\n

\u201cSmall Country,\u201d which in its original language shares the title of one of Mr. Faye\u2019s most popular songs, \u201cPetit Pays<\/a>,\u201d is told from the perspective of Gabriel, a 10-year-old boy with a French father and a Rwandan mother (the same mixed-race parentage as Mr. Faye). He is part of a gang of young boys sneaking beers in cabaret bars and stealing mangoes from local gardens to sell on the black market…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his first novel, \u201cSmall Country\u201d \u2014 a huge hit in France when it was published in 2016 and where it sold 700,000 copies \u2014 Mr. Faye wrote with a rare and subtle yearning about his youthful escapades in and around Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi. It has now been translated from French into English by Sarah Ardizzone and is being released by Hogarth on June 5.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1295,12,395,8],"tags":[28731,9310,96,28727,2640,9311,28728,2327,28730],"class_list":["post-56517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-media-archive","tag-bujumbura","tag-burundi","tag-france","tag-gael-faye","tag-new-york-times","tag-rwanda","tag-sarah-ardizzone","tag-the-new-york-times","tag-tobias-grey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56517"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56521,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56517\/revisions\/56521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}