The Black African migrant faced with the myth of the great stories in Donato Ndongo’s The Metro and Nativas by Vi-Makomè

Abstract

Evidence suggests that the question of migrations nowadays has become a major challenge of political, social and imaginary life of the “Tout-Monde“. For this reason there is an undeniable heightening of the intraAfrican, transAfrican and transcontinental migrations. In addition to South-South migrations, migrations to Europe continue to attract more media attention. If mass migration is widespread in the world, it arouses painful memories in the particular case of the post-colonial Black African migrant. The general objective that is intended here is to put in tension, through the two novels El metro and Nativas, respectively by Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo and Inongo Vi Makomè, the myth of the “great story” of the supposedly vigorous sexual prowess of the Black. Another major task of this article is to contribute modestly to the work of demystifying the (sexual) figure of the Black African migrant in Europe/Occident. The choice of these two novels has double importance here. The first one is that they belong to the category of novels called migration novels (which are fully inscribed nowadays in what one can call the “littérature-monde”. Secondly, they are novels that bring to light a large part of the problem of migrations, of “migrances” in general and, particularly, the problem of the advent of the postcolonial Black African migrant. The study has largely been based on the theoretical formulations of Victorien Lavou Zoungbo through is book Outsidering… (2007), in which he deals extensively with the question of the “great story of the sexual vigor-prowess of Black”. His theoretical formulations in which he proposes a dynamic and operative articulation of the history of Blacks in the Americas seem to fit well with the question of the “presence-history” of Black African migrants in Europe. The study has shown that the myth of “great stories” (particularly the sexual vigor-prowess of Black) can be a factor of visceral rejection or “successful” integration of Black African migrants in Europe/Occident.