IMMIGRANTS, SOURCE OF NEW ENERGIES

PEOPLE KNOW THAT IMMIGRANTS DO MUCH OF THE PHYSICAL WORK...

At rue Nationale, an ordinary street in the 13th

And that they energize neighborhood markets and found small businesses, bringing money that is locally spent, producing tax revenues and creating jobs...

Alex makes the bags himself to sell at marché Bastille

Marcel Lukombo fixed my leather vest.

# # #

They know the importance of intellectuals from the former colonies for French culture... 

• Martinique's Aimé Césaire (1913-2008), whose poetry is basic to the Négritude movement and modern French literature. For an extract, please click.

The slammer JYB reads Césaire at the Paris 360 Music Factory in the African neighborhood of La Goutte d'Or.

• Senegal's Ousmane Sow evoked the fight against colonialism with Combat at Little Big Horn,* an installation that occupied the pont des Arts in the spring of 1999. 

*The defeat of the American army by the Indians in 1876 (Custer's Last Stand, legendary in the United States).

YouTube with good pictures (French narration) / zoom

Le Figaro / zoom

His statue "The fighters" 

has occupied place de Valois 

in right-bank central Paris since 1919

City of Paris / zoom

# # #

And recognize those whose fame is recent...

• Senegal's Mohammed Mbougur Sarr, whose novel The Most Secret Memory of Man about African writers in exile won the extremely prestigious  Goncourt Prize (in 2022). 

Bookstore, rue de Tolbiac, 13th

• Kylian Mbappé, soccer celebrity, is of Cameroonian and Algerian origin, and the names of most members of the rest of the team are not those of Gauls.

At an intersection of lines at the Châtelet métro stop

"Made in the Paris Region"

"How Paris and its outskirts have become the world most important producers of soccer players."

# # #

They are aware the stars emerge from a vast pool of talent:

• In sports...

Square Léon in La Goutte d'Or, 18th

• In the arts as a whole. Among the performers I met by organizing events: 

•  Asta, queen of the Bassa in Cameroon, though a cleaning woman in Paris:

The photos in this section are by Claude Abron

• Moussa Lebkiri, whose sketches and writings evoke his childhood in a North African outskirt:

   

• Pastor Marcel Boungo, from Brazzaville, with Texas gospel singer Jo Ann Pickens at the Sainte-Chapelle...

 

# # #

But they forget that their presence adds to the pleasure of everyday life... 

 

And that they innovate in a way that "Gauls" would never imagine. Take... 

 

• The Chinese and Vietnamese New Year parade that draws crowds to "Chinatown..."

• Asian color that in that area animates the Parisian gray...

Avenue de Choisy

• Aspects of Black culture — sneakers, hip hop, slam, rap — and hairstyles for youth that have become universal... 

One of the multitude of posters on barbershop windows of La Goutte d'Or.

# # #

Immigrants frighten traditionalists, who look back to the old belief: "What LUCK to have encountered FRANCE!"...

Poster in conservative Versailles.

while a Tunisian who left school at age seven says the same with an energy and humor they cannot even imagine:

The late Jaber Al Mahjoub was well known to amateurs of art brut. For more about him, please click.

# # #

Those who fear that immigrants 

will submerge the venerable culture

ignore how much they have already enriched it.

*     *     *

To understand why France is different, think of the...

• Kings, women of the court, Church and rebels. 

• Small farms due to the Revolution.

• Exiles and foreign artists, writers, musicians... .

• Imperialists who imposed the French language. 

• Immigrant energies.

End of Part I.

*     *     *

Part II
Beyond the expected city