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A review by savaging
Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet
4.0
Jean Genet spent much of his early life behind bars for petty theft. He wrote this novel while in solitary confinement. The prisoners were given paper and forced to make bags with it, but instead Genet used it to write the wild lives of unrepentant queers and transwomen. The guard found the first draft and burned it. Genet wrote the book again.
In the introduction, Jean-Paul Sartre asks "Why? For whom? There was small chance of his keeping the work until his release, and even less of getting it printed. If, against all likelihood, he succeeded, the book was bound to be banned; it would be confiscated and scrapped. Yet he wrote on, he persisted in writing."
Sartre then says some nonsense reducing this novel to masturbation fantasies. So skip the intro and instead dive into the depth and humor and holiness of the story. Something about this book feels unconquerable. Not in the broad-chested-manly-hero sort of way, but in a way that is all subtle, impish, profane.
The one difficult part for me is Genet's treatment of the black characters. Surprising stereotypes for someone who would later be a stalwart supporter of black liberation movements.
In the introduction, Jean-Paul Sartre asks "Why? For whom? There was small chance of his keeping the work until his release, and even less of getting it printed. If, against all likelihood, he succeeded, the book was bound to be banned; it would be confiscated and scrapped. Yet he wrote on, he persisted in writing."
Sartre then says some nonsense reducing this novel to masturbation fantasies. So skip the intro and instead dive into the depth and humor and holiness of the story. Something about this book feels unconquerable. Not in the broad-chested-manly-hero sort of way, but in a way that is all subtle, impish, profane.
The one difficult part for me is Genet's treatment of the black characters. Surprising stereotypes for someone who would later be a stalwart supporter of black liberation movements.