Lilian Thuram, Laurent Voulzy and Dany Laferrière, gathered at the funeral of Maryse Condé

Former footballer Lilian Thuram, singer Laurent Voulzy and writer Dany Laferrière attended the funeral of writer Maryse Condé, explorer of West Indian and black identities, Friday at the Saint-Germain-des-Prés church in Paris .

Lilian Thuram, 1998 world champion with the Blues, was born in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, like Maryse Condé, who died at the age of 90 at the beginning of the month at Apt hospital (Vaucluse). “Education against racism” is at the heart of the foundation of the ex-athlete, a mission which refers to the themes running through the work of the author who has addressed Africa, slavery and multiple black identities.

Laurent Voulzy only set foot in Guadeloupe as an adult, where his mother had left to work in mainland France, his father remaining on the island. Her song Amélie Colbert, which is based on a beguine, evokes these skins, black and white, which give another color to life when they mix, a humanist and anti-racist theme that we find in her title Le soleil donne.

The work of the writer of Haitian origin Dany Laferrière, member of the French Academy, resonates in places with that of Maryse Condé. As part of the international literature festival Étonnants Voyageurs, organized in 2007 in Port-au-Prince in Haiti, Maryse Condé and Dany Laferrière spoke about writing and the essential freedom of the writer in front of schoolchildren.

“Giant of letters, Maryse Condé knew how to paint sorrows and hopes, from Guadeloupe to Africa, from the Caribbean to Provence. In a language of struggle and splendor, unique, universal,” President Emmanuel Macron reacted to his death on X. The Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, praised “the power of his writing, the acuity of his view on our common history, his ability to dissect the wounds that remain raw from colonial history”.