Gisele Pineau at Calcutta University. Picture by Bishwarup Dutta

Go back to Africa, you dirty Negress.” The children were hurling the abuse at Gisele Pineau, a classmate. In her school in the Parisian suburb of Kremlin-Bicetre, the 10-year-old was the only student of colour.

“There was a lot of racism,” says Pineau, now 51 and an acclaimed author of French-Caribbean origin. Sitting in the library of The French Association in Calcutta, Pineau reflects on a childhood scarred by “rejections, taunts and injuries”. “I would cry to my grandma to take me back to Guadeloupe (an overseas department of France in the Caribbean islands). It was as though we were in exile.”

Pineau’s parents shunned their Antillean past, refusing to speak the native Creole language. Antillean is a version of Creole. “For them, it was a language of misery, harking back to slavery and the sugar plantation.” Her grandmother was her only link to her roots. “Today, it is very important to me that my characters speak Creole alongside French.”

The pain sought an outlet. “I began to write. It was a bridge with a hostile world.” Pineau still remembers how she made out copies of her stories. “My brother took my first little novel to the streets of Paris and sold three copies for 20 cents each,” her face lights up.

“I write to bring a change in people’s heart — against violence, racism, prejudice and domination,” she slips into halting English from French.

Racism, after all, is hardly over. “It is difficult for coloured people to rent a house or sometimes to find a job.” It pains her to see compatriots in Guadeloupe being ashamed of their skin colour. “They marry the plus clair (lighter-skinned) so the children are less black.”

And why just racism in the world without? In Pineau’s novels, the home is a seat of insecurity and violence. Macadam Dreams, considered a masterpiece of French-Caribbean literature, is the story of Eliette and Angela, raped by their fathers, while The Drifting of Spirits has consensual sex between twins Paul and Celuta. But Pineau clarifies that these are not a part of the Caribbean experience alone. “If I was Russian, my characters would be Russian,” says the Toni Morrison fan.

This is the psychiatric nurse’s first visit to India. She took up the profession after lack of money forced her out of school. “It is a part of me I am trying to explore. There are so many Indians in the Caribbeans whose ancestors had landed there after the abolition of slavery. The first boat reached in 1865.” The present Creole culture though is a mix of all the influences — Indian, African and European. “My brother and sister have married Tamils,” she smiled, en route to meeting students of French at Calcutta University.