The American writer and poet Jason Mott may not be very well known to French-speaking audiences, but his first novel, Facing them (released in 2013) had been on the list of bestsellers from New York Times and adapted into a television series (Resurrection).
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The child who wanted to disappear is his fourth novel; strongly inspired by his personal experience, he won the prestigious National Book Award last fall. The narrator is a writer who travels the country to promote his new book. During one of his stops, a child with skin “even darker than the half-light of sleep” appears to him. The writer, who can no longer discern reality from the fruit of his imagination, then begins a dialogue with this boy nicknamed Charbon, while all the media are talking about a black child who has been shot dead by the police. Together, they will discuss this fear that haunts “people of a certain skin color” and which prompted the boy’s parents to teach him to become invisible, to protect him. The child will follow him throughout his tour to North Carolina, in the city where he grew up, “this part of the world [où] we lack nothing,” he wrote, from Confederate flags to statues funded by Confederate descendants, from lynchings to riots. “It’s too big a story to tell”, the writer will say to the child who implores him to write about his life so that he can finally exist. And yet, through this powerful metaphor that gives a voice to those who have long been deprived of it, he will still manage to tell it, echoing a whole generation that asks only to live without the fear of falling under the bullets. .
The child who wanted to disappear
Jason Mott (translated from English by Jérôme Schmidt)
Otherwise
432 pages