Scott Manning

In New Novel, Award-Winning Author Louis-Philippe Dalembert Explores Racist Violence from Multiple Perspectives Winner of the 2020 French Voices Grand Prize in Fiction for The Mediterranean Wall follows with Milwaukee Blues Shortlisted for 2021 Prix Goncourt, New Novel Receives Albertine Publishing Grant “Superb”—Le Monde Contacts: Scott Manning, scott@scottmanningpr.com, 603-491-0995 Abigail Welhouse, abigail@scottmanningpr.com, 332-203-3423 Digital review copies available via Edelweiss. Print and digital review copies available on request. Author available for virtual interviews and events. “For years, Louis-Philippe Dalembert has searched the margins of history for stories of courage and fearless humanity in the face of persecution,” wrote Nathan H. Dize in a review of Louis-Philippe Dalembert’s last novel, The Mediterranean Wall in Words Without Borders. With his latest novel, Milwaukee Blues (Schaffner Press, May 2, 2023, $16.95), the acclaimed Haitian-born writer and poet turns his gaze from the immigration crisis in Europe to the tragic consequences of racism on this side of the Atlantic. When published in France in 2021, it was shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt. In January 2023, the book was awarded a grant from Villa Albertine and The F.A.C.E. Foundation, which supports French-American Cultural Exchange in Education and the Arts. The grant recognizes the quality of both the original work and the translation. Milwaukee Blues will therefore become a finalist for the annual Albertine Prize. Milwaukee Blues is a unique and all-encompassing fictionalization of real-time events. Dalembert was initially moved by the killing of Eric Garner and with his emotions further fueled by the George Floyd murder, he synthesizes elements from both cases, creating a new story centered around the killing of his main character, Emmett in one of America’s most segregated cities. His life story is told by a variety of voices, including the Pakistani shopkeeper who calls 911, his college football coach, a former girlfriend, a teacher, his wife, the police officer, a pair of activists—one Haitian-American and the other a Jewish Rastafarian, and a former prison guard-turned-minister (self-described as a “fisher for souls”) who tries to hold her community together in the face of the tragedy. Together, they form a chorus that provides a more complete, nuanced perspective on the complex character who is Emmett. Along with the allusion to music in the book’s title, the novel is sprinkled with references to Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, the Rolling Stones, J.B. Lenoir, and the North Carolina Ramblers. In it, Dalembert also draws on his experiences as a trained journalist, a published poet, a Haitian-born immigrant, and a 2013 University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee visiting professor, adding a thoughtful and powerful voice to our current discussions about race. Upon the book’s publication in France, Le Monde called it “Superb.” Le Figaro weighed in with “his work is not that of a journalist or a commentator. He goes further, much further, to go back to the roots of the evil… Such is the strength of this novel: its depth, its inventiveness, its necessity.” Milwaukee Blues was translated from the French by Marjolijn de Jager whose translation of Congo, Inc: Bismarck’s Testament was shortlisted for The Best Translated Book Awards in 2019. This new novel from Dalembert joins the growing list of international works in translation published by Schaffner Press, who also published his award-winning novel, The Mediterranean Wall, also translated by de Jager. The company was listed among the institutions “doing laudable work to improve diversity in the world of translation” by the essayist John Keene in a World Literature Today Q&A. About the Author Louis-Philippe Dalembert (born December 8, 1962, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti) is a Haitian poet and novelist, who writes in both French and Haitian creole. His works have been translated into several languages. He now divides his home between Paris and Port-au-Prince. He has received several prizes and awards for his work, among them, the Prix Goncourt shortlist 2021, Belgian and Spanish Goncourt Choice 2021 for Milwaukee Blues, the 2020 French Voices Grand Prize in Fiction, a residency at the Villa Medicis in Rome, the Grand Prix de la langue française, Polish and Swiss Goncourt Choice 2019, Goncourt des lycéens shortlist for The Mediterranean Wall, and the Prix Orange du livre 2017, Grand Prix du roman de l’Académie française shortlist and Prix Médicis short list for his novel, Avant que les ombres s’effacent. He is also known to be an avid soccer fan. Trained in literature and journalism, Dalembert first worked as a journalist in his homeland before leaving in 1986 for France where he obtained his Ph.D. at the Sorbonne in comparative literature and a master’s in journalism from the Ecole Supérieure de Journalisme de Paris. Since then, he has traveled widely as a teacher and visiting poet, including the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2013, the Freie Universität (Berlin) and the University of Bern and currently holds the Writer-in-Residence Chair at Sciences Po Paris. His poetry has been published in several major literary journals in the US, and Dalembert was a contributor to the recently released anthology And We Came Out and Saw the Stars Again: Writers from Around the World on the COVID-19 Epidemic. About the Translator Born in Indonesia (1936), raised in The Netherlands, and residing in the USA since the age of 22, Marjolin de Jager earned a Ph.D. in romance Languages and Literatures from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1975. She translates from both the Dutch and the French. Francophone African literature, the women’s voices in particular, has a special place in her heart. Among her honors are an NEA grant, two NEH grans and, in 2011, the annually awarded ALA Distinguished Member Award received from the African Literature Association for scholarship, teaching, and translations of African Literature. In 2019 de Jager’s translation of Congo, Inc: Bismarck’s Testament (Indiana University Press) was shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Awards. She has to date translated five titles for Schaffner Press. Milwaukee Blues Schaffner Press, May 2, 2023 282 pages, $16.95 trade paperback ISBN: 9781639640096 eBook ISBN: 9781639640102

NEW BOOK REVEALS MORE THAN A CENTURY OF HIDDEN BLACK AMERICAN HISTORY With Economy Hall, author Fatima Shaik brings to light the free Black New Orleans brotherhood that supported its community through slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, white terrorism, and the birth of jazz “Journalist and novelist Shaik blows the dust off the ancient records of an African American society, revealing a forgotten past. . . . A lively, readable story that nicely complicates the view of racial and ethnic relations in the South of old.” — Kirkus (starred review) “bearing witness to early Black American activism…Shaik aims to deepen our sense of Black American history.” --Library Journal Contacts Scott Manning, 603-491-0995, scott@scottmanningpr.com Abigail Welhouse, 646-517-2826, abigail@scottmanningpr.com One hundred years of elaborate handwritten journals recovered from the trash reveal early Black activism in a new book, Economy Hall: The Hidden History of a Free Black Brotherhood by Fatima Shaik (The Historic New Orleans Collection, February 25, 2021, $34.95). Rescued from the back of a pickup truck by Shaik’s father in the 1950s, the twenty-four detailed ledgers, languished in the closet of her family’s historic Seventh Ward home for fifty years. Shaik, a journalist and now former Assistant Professor at St. Peter’s University, set out to find context for the ledgers dated 1836-1935. She scoured journal articles and books, real estate purchases, notarial acts and census records at private and public archives. The result is a history of Black men and their lives in the Société d’Economie et d’Assistance Mutuelle, a benevolent organization. They were the elite of a thriving free community in New Orleans prior to the Civil War. Statistics show that for the first four decades of the nineteenth century, almost half of the city’s Black people were free. This compares to 14% nationwide prior to 1865. The Economie’s mission was “to help one another and teach one another while holding out a protective hand to suffering humanity,” Shaik says. “I came to realize that the Economie journals were among the few surviving primary sources written by the community activists themselves,” adds Shaik. ECONOMY HALL: The Hidden History of a Free Black Brotherhood is framed by the story of Ludger Boguille, the Society’s longtime Secretary. Images in the book display his beautiful script “as elegant as a satin-stitched monogram on a linen handkerchief,” writes Shaik. A son of Haitian immigrants, Boguille blossomed from an introspective poet and 1840s schoolteacher to an advocate for Equal Rights. He narrates his escape from a bloody massacre in 1866, speaks at the first Colored Convention joining the formerly enslaved and the Black moneyed-class, and becomes the grand marshall of a citywide Emancipation celebration in New Orleans’ iconic Congo Square. Some Economists were Creoles, a generation of non-Indigenous children born in colonial Louisiana. Economy members also commuted to France, Italy, Haiti, and Mexico. “All were successful and civic-minded. They created a private library and supported one another financially and emotionally beginning in 1836. Later, Economistes fought to preserve the Union, marched for suffrage, joined the government during the heady days of Reconstruction, and waged bloody battles against the fake news of the late 19th century that set the Civil Rights struggle back for decades. The records expand the narrative of Blacks as active participants in the major social and political events of the United States and offer additional information about their terms of engagement.” Their 1857 president, Pierre Casanave, articulated their resolve: “May our behaviors always strike down our oppressors, so that, in each of us, our miserable enemies may discover the proof that we understand that man was born to live with his equals.” The members built a meeting hall in 1857, Salle d’Economie, later called Economy Hall in English. The New Orleans Tribune, wrote in 1867 that Economy Hall was “where the oppressed and the friends of liberty first met in council in Louisiana” and compared the location to Faneuil Hall in Boston, which hosted civic meetings to promote the ideals of American freedom. Members also filled the Economy Hall with music—orchestra performances, charity balls, and, later, dance parties with Kid Ory and Louis Armstrong. The Carnegie Hall of jazz, Economy Hall stood until 1965. Now, a tent at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival bears its name and draws almost a half-million annual visitors. The hall was sold to a church in 1945 and was demolished after hurricane damage in 1965. The ledgers show the way that Black men in the distant past organized to support Black lives, a history that was erased and largely forgotten. “The Economie journals communicated power, ambition, loyalty, and optimism,” Shaik concludes. “And yet, their stories had advanced and receded from American society and international attention with the winds of commerce and social awareness.” # # # About the author Fatima Shaik is the author of Economy Hall: The Hidden History of a Free, Black Brotherhood (The Historic New Orleans Collection, February 2021). She was born in the historic Seventh Ward of New Orleans and bred on the oral histories of Black Creoles told by her family and neighbors. Only after she read the records of the Economie—3,000 pages of handwritten French stored in her family’s home—did she realize this community’s impact. She spent two decades reading the journals and documenting events with real estate records, legal cases, old monographs, and articles. A former Assistant Professor at Saint Peter’s University and daily journalist, Shaik is a trustee of PEN America and member of The Writers Room in NYC. Economy Hall is her first work of nonfiction and her seventh book. Economy Hall: The Hidden History of a Free Black Brotherhood. By Fatima Shaik The Historic New Orleans Collection, dist. by Univ. of Virginia. February 25, 2021. 544p. ISBN 9780917860805. $34.95. HISTORY