Since 2015, the association “Repair language, I can” has given birth to young authors thanks to the adventure of writing collective novels, from middle school to high school, and even beyond. Sandrine Vermot-Desroches and Alain Absire, respectively director and president of the association, are the co-founders. “It’s a mission for us”, affirm the two authors. Professor of literature at the college for nearly three decades, Sandrine Vermot-Desroches now directs a master’s degree in Youth Book Professions at the Catholic Institute of Toulouse and she recently published Children’s edition today. The character in the adolescent novel (L’Harmattan, 2022). Prize Fémina 1987, Alain Absire is, for his part, the author of around forty works.
Their association was born from an experiment carried out by Sandrine Vermot-Desroches while she was teaching. With Alain Absire, they designed a device “unique” which is at the origin of 19 illustrated collections imagined and written by “more than 4,500 young people aged 11 to 20, from the Paris and Toulouse regions”. The novels are available in bookstores and can be ordered. The association “Repair Language, I Can” today allows some 500 students to write during the school year and it hopes to have as many read from now on. Interview with Sandrine Vermot-Desroches and Alain Absire.
Franceinfo Culture: How was the idea of this concept of collective writing born that you offer in middle and high schools, particularly to young people “distant from books and reading” as you say?
Sandrine Vermot-Desroches : What action should be put in place for young people having difficulty with writing? That’s the idea. The trigger was the Bataclan [l’attentat terroriste du 13 novembre 2015]. This was obviously a shock for everyone. We were in Paris that evening. It’s Alain Bentolila [linguiste français], which says that mastering language well also means putting words to the world and understanding it. Language is not only knowing how to speak well, writing well, but it is also having concepts, understanding, using the right vocabulary. The danger is the amalgams: one word used for another, one concept for another and the shift occurs and we do not understand each other. This is why our action is around writing but not only. We want all our actions to be collective and never individual because there is this work of living together, of thinking together, of building together, which I think are crucial for our future societies. In a society where we express ourselves, for example with social networks, in a narcissistic way, it is fundamental to produce literature where we hear everyone’s voice in a constructive way.
Everyone expressing themselves while listening to the other…
Sandrine Vermot-Desroches : Indeed, we learn to talk to each other, to listen to the ideas of others for a common good which is the work. It is not for nothing that in Toulouse since the beginning, we have been very well followed and it is really very particular to Haute-Garonne, by the secular citizen route because our project is too. To the extent that everyone is a citizen and because by writing, we address issues that affect young people but also society. We talk about harassment but when we are in a project dynamic, we immediately spot the problems and we can try to resolve them. When there is a group working, and for quite a long time, this avoids all the crystallizations that can occur in a class.
This project was also set up for self-esteem, and it really works. We realize that young people will speak, who sometimes remain silent in class because the workshop is another territory. Furthermore, when adults and young people form a group to create together, no one positions themselves as knowing. It changes everything because there is this sharing, this pleasure of imagining together. We don’t know who wrote what but we built it together and a work is no small thing.
Why do you work, among others, in vocational high schools?
Sandrine Vermot-Desroches : The vocational high school is a place where we need books, writing, reading. Often, we have young people who arrive – some have really chosen these paths – who are disconnected from reading, who have a negative representation of it or who cannot read. It’s true that inviting them into this writing together, to enter into an imagination, is to lead them to reconcile themselves with the book, with reading but also with the school, the institution and ultimately with adults. Another relationship is established through writing and creation. The goal is for them to be authors from start to finish. They are obviously accompanied by book and education professionals. Then, in a living room, they speak – it is their living room because it is the authors who are being interviewed –, they present their books and sign them. This action is offered to students in difficulty, to priority areas of the city – in Toulouse we work a lot at Mirail – and at the same time, you have more highly rated establishments which participate in our activity. The great thing is that there is no stigma. There is this diversity, which is extremely important.
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How is the work organized between the association, the teaching team and the author who will lead the writing workshops?
Alain Absire: This year, there are 18 classes sponsored by 16 authors who are used to writing workshops. Participating establishments are voluntary. It is teachers who generally contact us, particularly through the Culture Pass. We are therefore dealing with literature professors, librarian professors or others who are very motivated. We have several meetings: one from the start in September, another in January to take stock of the entire first stage of writing, which consists of creating the characters and writing the scenario. And at the end, there is the living room where everyone meets.
Sandrine Vermot-Desroches: At the first meeting, there is really a schedule that is established. The basis really being to write the screenplay. The roadmap is important. Generally speaking, we realize at the end of December that the scenario is finished. At the beginning of January, we wrote or we started the first chapter at the end of December. In December, our teachers provide a mid-term review which includes the scenario, the characters and they evaluate the action. When we meet in January, we all share together, authors and teachers, everything we have written and everything we have encountered in terms of difficulties or the tips we have discovered to get around them. There are also educational contributions: Alain and I co-wrote a book, Towards teenage literature written by teenagers which contains files. And every year we do at least one workshop. This is important because it lets us know how it works.
Did you launch a new activity this year?
Alain Absire : Yes, a reading competition. In our catalog we have 102 already published novels. It is among these novels that young people, with their teachers, choose based on the sheets sent to them (including the summary, the characters, questions they could ask themselves) the text they want to read. read and want to talk about. From the end of November to the beginning of February, they will write a sort of review together with a writer, who will spend half a day with them. They will therefore produce a reading sheet on these novels written by young people like them, for them. A jury, bringing together book and education professionals, will meet to choose four: two from the Paris region and two from the Toulouse region. The classes which have been chosen for the relevance of their reading sheet will be invited to our two book fairs in June, in Paris and Toulouse. They will then have carte blanche to come and defend their choice. We go from writing to reading and, in between, there is the publication of books that can be found in bookstores since we are publishers.
What do you remember from this experience which has lasted for almost a decade?
Sandrine Vermot-Desroches: I will use the term transformation. A thesis was written based on the observation of a cohort of young people who participated in this action. It is that of the sociologist of reading, Mariangela Roselli, professor at Jean Jaurès University. In this study which became a book, Write together and transform the relationship into writing, it shows the transformation in relation to writing, the transformation in relation to reading and especially in relation to others and to oneself. What seems important to me in life is alchemy, even if it doesn’t reveal itself immediately. We know when we are in education, we must not deceive ourselves: not everything is a success. But, generally speaking, we observe a transformation. In vocational high schools, for example, we notice that students who participated in this activity continue in BTS. We see that this makes them grow, gives them this self-esteem, which makes the activity bring transformation.