More thoughts on The Art of Losing:
- Made me think: “She wondered whether she had developed a form of racism common to certain children of immigrants: she cannot imagine having a relationship with someone who comes from the sand region as her family.” And this, about the same girl inheriting her father’s “need to reinvent himself in order to feel he truly exists.”
- Re: the title (also referring to this poem)— Zeniter grapples with themes of of colonialism and oppression as she tells the history of the French-Algerian War and its resulting diaspora through the voices of people on many “sides” of the conflict. In doing so, she highlights what we are juststarting to face in the US: that while we converge on a single history told by the “winners,” we do not erase the truth of the many other realities that occurred.