We, French-speaking writers from all countries, with at our side our fellow workers in the literary sector, librarians, animators, booksellers, professors of literature, journalists, wish to express our great dismay and our immense anger at France Inter’s decision to remove The French-speaking bookstore.
An essential and essential program if ever there was one, it is led by a team and a journalist, Emmanuel Khérad, who have devoted many years to defending a fairer vision of the Francophonie: no longer Franco-centric but inclusive, open, united. .
The French-speaking bookstore is this place where literatures in French, in all their diversity, are placed on an equal footing and considered in all their richness, their history and their current affairs, together. A place also where listeners, readers, authors can, virtually or actually, find each other and seek, beyond geographical distances and differences, what binds them, unites them, distinguishes them. Discuss and share it.
Bringing together French-speaking literatures, all French-speaking literatures, the French and the others, the French like the others, according to a definition of the Francophonie which goes beyond outdated visions and which brings us together, without complexes and without hierarchy, is saving, necessary. It is an enrichment for everyone.
The first signatories of this letter were Belgian, Quebecois, quickly joined by colleagues from or residents of Algeria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Catalonia, Chile, Congo, Korea, the Coast of ‘Ivory, from Eeyou Istchee, from Egypt, from the United States, from France, from Guadeloupe, from Haiti, from Hungary, from Iran, from Italy, from Lebanon, from Madagascar, from Morocco, from Martinique , from the Innu nation, from New Brunswick, from Norway, from Ontario, from Palestine, from Senegal, from Singapore, from Switzerland, from Tunisia.
There are now several hundred of us and we will not resign ourselves to what this precious and rich place and time offered to us by Emmanuel Khérad and his team, essential for the future of literature, for that of the French language, and our future common, be brutally withdrawn from French-speakers and Francophiles around the world.
The French-speaking bookstore must come back and stay, to bear witness to the tremendous excitement of French-speaking literature and the excitement of those who defend it all over the world.
*The full list of signatories is here.