CB Does the idea of community have any meaning for you?

MC I think that there used to be a Guadeloupean community when the island was more turned in on itself, when people didn't travel, and didn't have the opportunity to look for work abroad. Then, there was a group of people who were more or less similar in the way they spoke, the way they dressed, ate and so on. I think perhaps my great grandmother or my grandmother lived in that community. But as soon as people started to leave Guadeloupe, to live abroad for six years, ten years, when they began to go abroad to look for work, and sometimes stayed away permanently, bringing up children who know nothing about Guadeloupe – the Antillean community has not ceased to exist, but it has radically changed. The idea of community has become a fantasy. People have started wanting to conform to the stories that their parents used to tell them.

CB Even those who stayed in Guadeloupe?

MC Yes, those who stayed are also faced with change. If you look at Guadeloupe now you will see that there is not a single family that does not have relatives abroad. Relatives who come back for the holidays. They have daughters who have married Frenchmen, ‘whites’ as we say at home, and that inevitably leads to a change in the community. Originally, there must have been a community, but it has changed – it has changed so much, been so transformed, that one can no longer define it. The day before yesterday I was with a group of young people, a reading club that had read Desirada, and a girl asked me: ‘But for you, where does the Caribbean begin and where does it end?’ And it struck me as an excellent question.

CB Actually, I've just read Desirada; I like it enormously, I think above all because it gives an absolutely contemporary feeling of what it is like to live in a big city …

MC Yes, a city in which one was not born.

CB Do you consider that to be a totally negative situation?