Last post, I shared the first journal entry for my “Black Expatriate Writers in France” class. Today, I’m going to share the second and third entries from May 12, 2023 and May 16, 2023. I wrote the first entry after we moved from Avignon to Marseille and the second on the train from Marseille to Nice. If you would like more information about Marseille and some of my initial thoughts before visiting the port city check out “The Pan-Mediterranean Marseille.”

12 May 2023

It’s been a couple of days, and we’ve moved from Avignon to Marseille. What has been really interesting for me is seeing the students’ reactions to the different cities. Avignon was laid back, and Marseille is the complete opposite. It’s a cosmopolitan city, the second largest in France with 1.5 million people.

From the moment we disembarked from the plane in Marseille to catch our train to Avignon, students noticed the mixture of ethnicities, languages, and cultures. The move to Avignon changed the complexion of the populace, having more tourists mixed in with locals, mostly white. However, they did see a diverse population in Avignon with women wearing hijab and people speaking Arabic and African languages.

One of the first pieces they read for this course was a selection from Eddie Glaude’s Begin Again where he talks about coming to Europe and his journey to connect with James Baldwin. He talks about being able to be silent and listen, being alone with one’s thoughts. Since were in such a large group, the silence, I think, is hard for them because they want to talk to one another. I hope they sit with themselves and take in the people, sites, and sounds around them. I don’t know if they are doing this.

I’ve had a chance to sit and listen, picking up on things here and there, even though I am terrible at French. I want to be able to understand, but I can’t. I want to be able to converse with people, and I try, but I fail. That is part of life, being able to try and fail.

I think about the students on this trip, and I keep thinking how they’re working, desperately, to find out who they are. I feel they are more comfortable with themselves than I was at their age, and I feel optimistic about their impact on the current moment and the future and their willingness to voice their opinions and speak up, even when speaking up may not be what the majority says is best. They have fight, but sometimes that fight turns to cliques, and it alienates others. I know, we cling to those we feel comfortable with, but in clinging to that comfort we fail to expand our understanding of the world and those who inhabit it with us.

Even though these cliquish tendencies exist, we’ve had experiences where the students have gotten out of their comfort zones and tried to experience new things. The prime example has to be our dinner at La Femina, an Algerian restaurant right off the Canibere near the Vieux Port. Some student were trepidatious about trying the couscous, meat, and stew mixed together with the chili paste, but when they ate it, most loved it.

It’s these experiences that I hope students take with them about as they reflect upon Simeon, Ahmed, and Hossein in William Gardner Smith’s The Stone Face or the group of individuals Banjo hangs out with in Claude McKay’s novel. These are important moments, and I’m glad they get to share them with others and experience them.

16 May 2023

Leaving Marseille for Cagnes Sur Mer (Nice) is somewhat bittersweet. We spent about four full days in the port city, the crossroads of the Mediterranean. Marseille has a very cosmopolitan feel, as I expected from everything I read leading up to our time there.

We stayed in Noailles, the Arab quarter, right down the steps from the Marseille St. Charles train station. The steps are grand, adorned at the top with two statues of young boys holding on the lions with a banner wrapped around each that reads, “Le monde est a l’energie.” peering from the top of the steps, past the lions, once can see Notre Dame de la Garde high up on the mountain on the southeast part of the city. They church gazes down upon Marseille, claiming its power as “the world is the energy” counters the church’s mere presence as a focal point of the landscape.

At the bottom of the steps, there are two two statues by Louis Botinelly depicting Africa ad Asia, India specifically. The sculpture of Africa shows a woman, resplendent, lounging on a bed with her left arm supporting her head as young boys gather around her. She has jewelry on her wrists, ears, and elsewhere, and she is surrounded by wealth, depicting the riches of Africa. She is strong and powerful, but she is also symbolic of France’s colonial reach, its exploitation of Senegal, Algeria, Indo-China, and other nations. It’s also a testament to Marseille’s cosmopolitan nature.

Walking down the Canibere towards the Vieux Port, I heard Arabic, French, English, Chinese, and countless other languages among the women earing hijab as they pushed children in strollers or women wearing headwraps as they held their son’s or daughter’s hands. Turning right off of the Canibere, my sense overwhelmed me with smells as I went further into Noailles, walking past markets filled with spices and teas and strolling past hallal cafes where succulent smells emanated from the kitchens.

Taking a left from the Canibere, I ended up in Joliette, the oldest quarter in of Marseille with its dusty streets and high inclines. I thought about, as Martin Grizell led us around the area, Claude McKay, Banjo, and the beach bums treading the path I treaded, a path where humanity, not nationality, sexuality, race, or religion, defined you. That is something Martin kept stressing during the Black Marseille tour, the humanity of Marseille.

Before I came to Marseille, I saw numerous accounts of Marseille as a “wicked city” in the south of France, a dirty city full of crime where I’d need to watch my back so I wouldn’t get pickpocketed. I thought of New Orleans, a city deemed sinful and wicked, a city which carries many of the same stereotypes as Marseille. New Orleans and Marseille are no more wicked than were I live in rural Georgia. What makes them “wicked,” in people’s eyes, is their cosmopolitan nature, the mixing of cultures and humanity. It’s the blackness and the brownness that makes them “wicked.”

It’s the “terrorizing languages,” as Martin termed it, that concocts within the imagination these cities as “wicked” and extremely violent. However, they are not. Granted, I only spent five days in Marseille, so I cannot speak with full authority, but I’ve spent plenty of time in New Orleans, and in many ways, Marseille, the port city of the Mediterranean, and New Orleans, the port city at the moth of the Mississippi, exemplify humanity.