“She tries to find the balance between history and contemporary times and these global identities and how one individual can manage or cannot manage to fit within that great ensemble. (…) That’s what she’s excellent at: reflecting on the collective and still not forsaking the individual.”
– This year’s co-curator Maboula Soumahoro in ‘the un-Conformist | Library Chat’ of the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination.

During ‘Ode to Maryse Condé’ we read paragraphs from Condé’s work and discuss her impact on our literary and otherwise lived lives. What does it mean, take and give to recognize and reimagine our Afro-Dutch and Black-Parisian lives through the proposed possibilities provided by this Iconic writer?