Noir Atlantic

"The Noir Atlantic" follows the influence of African American author Chester Himes on Francophone African crime fiction. In 1953, Himes emigrated to Paris; he struggled there, just as he had in the United States. In 1957, his luck changed: the famous French Serie noire brought out the first installment of his "Harlem" crime series, "La reine des pommes". Suddenly, he was a household name in France. Later, he would also have a significant influence on Francophone African writers; for them, Himes' blend of absurdist humor and violence offered an alternative to a high literary paradigm implanted during the colonial era. Likewise, his heterogeneous identity as American, black, and a writer of "French" bestsellers modeled an escape from the centripetal pull of the Metropole. Starting with Abasse Ndione's depictions of Senegal's marijuana-smoking subculture in "La Vie en spirale" (1982) and ending with Mongo Beti's 2001 "Branle-bas en noir et blanc", set in Yaounde, Cameroon, Francophone African crime fiction rejected French criteria of literary success; it embraced a new postcolonial aesthetic that emphasized entertaining the reader while making a living. "The Noir Atlantic" demonstrates why turning to what this study calls a "frivolous literary" mode represented a profound shift in perspective that anticipated more recent developments such as literature monde.