Mayotte Capécia

Lucette Céranus Combette (17 February 1916 – 24 November 1955), known by her pen name Mayotte Capécia was a writer from Martinique. She is best known for her novel I Am a Martinican Woman (French: Je suis martiniquaise), published in 1948, which was the first book published in France by a woman of color.

Her work was brought to public attention primarily due to Frantz Fanon's critiques of her novels in his 1952 book Black Skin, White Masks, in which he denounced them for demonstrating self-hatred and valorizing whiteness. Later critics have reconsidered Fanon's criticism, interpretations of Combette's novels, their significance to Caribbean literature, the extent to which Combette's writing is autobiographical, and the authorship of her novels. Her writing has been reread from a feminist perspective, with Lizbeth Paravisini-Gebert considering it to be foundational in the development of Caribbean feminist literature.

Biography Lucette Céranus was one of twins born on 17 February 1916 to a single mother in Le Carbet in Martinique, then a French colony. Details of her life have been ambiguous because of the semi-autobiographical nature of I Am a Martinican Woman, whose protagonist shares her pseudonym. However, the narrative departs from her real life.

Her father, Eugène Combette had left Martinique before the birth of the twins to join the French Navy and later married one of his aunt's god-daughters in 1917. Upon hearing of the marriage, Céranus' mother, Théodosie Clémencia Émilie Céranus left Le Carbet and raised Céranus and her sister Reine until they were seven years old, when Céranus was sent to stay with one of her father's sisters in Le Carbet and Reine was entrusted to a teacher who moved between cities and villages on the coast. Unlike her sister, Céranus was able to attend school during this period, but overall, she received little education in her childhood.

Céranus later met a Syrian merchant who helped her establish a business, where she combined a grocery store and a laundry service. They had a daughter in January 1938 but their relationship was strained and Céranus ended the relationship in 1940 or 1941.

In Spring 1941, Céranus met a French naval officer named André, who was a supporter of the Vichy regime. They had a son together and their relationship lasted two years, until André had to return to France at the end of Admiral Robert's administration in the Antilles. He documented their love story and sent Céranus his memoir by mail, which was later incorporated into the second half of I Am a Martinican Woman. This novel takes place entirely during Admiral Robert's regime and tackles the war more directly than the previous book.

Authorship At the time that I Am a Martinican Woman was published, Combette was barely literate and the book was written with the help of ghostwriters. The book was advertised as an autobiography, in which "for the first time, a woman of colour tells her life story."

Mayotte Capécia was accepted as the true identity of the author until 1995, when Beatrice Stith Clark, who translated the novels into English, discovered the real identity of the author to be Lucette Céranus Combette.