Boy

Boy is an adaptation of Collen’s 1996 Creole novel Misyon Garcon, and was therefore seemingly unwritten in English in order to be re-iterated in relation to the Creole native to Mauritius. Before we have even read a word of Boy, we have been pitched into the middle of a linguistic exchange; a dialogue that interfaces languages (French, Creole, and English) in order to both showcase the linguistic mosaic of Mauritian identity, as well as posit these languages in a larger spectrum of political power. With Boy, Lindsey Collen’s own sensitivity to language is also evident, as she seems to be writing first as an activist whose writing has been censored, threatened and banned, and subsequently as a novelist, and in this respect, Collen has not departed from the political role that has traditionally defined African novelists.