Fabienne Kanor’s works, "D’eaux douces" and "Humus", deal with the comparison between a past lived in faraway countries, like Martinique or the Africa of the origins, and a present in metropolitan France, and uses the themes of water, sailing, and the permanence of slavery in the collective mind to explore the effects of this displacement. Kanor was born in Martinique but raised in France, and defined herself as a ‘negropolitaine’. In her first novel, "D’eaux douces", the focus of the narration lays on the initiatory journey to France made by a young French speaking Antillean girl. The journey will help the girl in the discovery of her identity and sexuality. Slavery is a very marginal theme here, barely mentioned as a metaphor of young Frida’s present condition.
The second novel, "Humus", is completely devoted to the description of the journey undertaken by the slave ship 'Le Soleil' that left Nantes in 1774 to collect slaves along the African coasts in order to deport them to the French Antilles, and the decision of a dozen slaves to throw themselves at sea to avoid a life in captivity.
The essay investigates the postcolonial poetics of the two novels and focuses in particular on the isotopy of water and the image of the ship.
