Continuing the Tradition? Michael Roch and the Future of Martinican Literature

Abstract

In recent years, Patrick Chamoiseau has appeared to take a new writer, who is both continuing and renewing the Martinican literary tradition, under his wing: Michael Roch. This article explores this emerging writer, focusing in particular on his 2022 novel Tè Mawon and its relationship of both continuity and rupture with the work of its literary predecessors, Chamoiseau and fellow Martinican Édouard Glissant. To do so, this article examines the novel’s various allusions to the work of Chamoiseau and Glissant, as well as the manner in which the concept of Caribbean generations is thematised in the novel. It then explores how such generational interaction is a two-way dialogue by exploring Chamoiseau’s endorsements of this newcomer. In positioning Roch as the latest “son” in the exclusive, highly selective, and strongly gendered Martinican literary family tree—with Chamoiseau the father and Glissant the grandfather—this article highlights how his novel is both a development of and a departure from the work of his predecessors. This piece is thus a reflection on the intergenerational tendency of literature from and about Martinique, offering insight into the future potentiality of the literary tradition as embodied through Roch.