In 1962 Françoise Ega, a Martinican woman working odd jobs and raising five children in Marseille, stumbled upon a newspaper article about Carolina Maria de Jesus, a Black Brazilian woman who, “hunched over” in a favela and using “pieces of paper that [she] found in the trash,” wrote a highly acclaimed memoir, Quarto de despejo, that would go on to be an enormous bestseller. Inspired by this fellow Black woman’s diary and her insistence on documenting her experiences by any means, Ega resolved to pursue her dream of becoming a writer.

Over the next decade she wrote three books. The only one to be published in her lifetime was Le temps des Madras, a coming-of-age story about a young girl growing up in Morne-Rouge, Martinique, in the 1920s. A second novel, L’alizé ne soufflait plus, which follows Martinican soldiers fighting for France in World War II, was published posthumously after her death at fifty-five, as was her diary, Notes to a Black Woman. Written in epistolary form as unsent letters to Carolina Maria de Jesus, Notes was motivated by an expressly political impulse. Ega was a trained typist and able to secure various jobs to supplement her husband’s income, but after she witnessed the discrimination her fellow migrant women encountered while employed in the homes of Marseille’s white families, she took jobs as a cleaning lady to document the exploitation and dehumanization that domestic workers faced. When she felt discouraged—ridiculed by her husband, exhausted by her children, worn out by her labor for women who delighted in demeaning her—she would think of Carolina and take up her pen.

The resulting book, from which the following selections are drawn, foreshadows the activism to which Ega would dedicate herself later in life, including founding organizations to improve the lives of Antillean migrants—from after-school programs for kids to adult literacy lessons—and helping to create the Espace Culturel Busserine, her neighborhood’s first community center, which is still active today. Notes to a Black Woman is a portrait of one woman’s revolt in the face of the racist and patriarchal forces that affect us all.

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May 1962

Of course, Carolina, the woes of the poor the world over are as similar as sisters. People read your work out of curiosity, but I’ll never read your book; everything you’ve written I already know, and the truth is that it’s the most indifferent people who are making a big to-do over your words. I started writing this a week ago, but my little ones run around so much that I barely have time to set down on paper the whirlwind of my thoughts.

I am indignant. A girl from my home country told me such upsetting things about her life at her employers’ house that I swore to get to the bottom of it. So now I earn some money and take stock of the situation: I took a job as a cleaning lady five days ago. My employers are embarrassed because I’m not fresh off the boat; I can talk about the Champs-Élysées, Touraine, or Notre-Dame de la Garde with ease. They can’t call me Marie or Julie. Anyway, that’s no problem for them: they don’t call me anything at all. Two weeks have gone by and no one has asked me for my name or identity card, it’s unbelievable!

There are two young girls, the older one is studying advanced math, the second for her baccalaureate. The older one ignores me, she’s crammed full of equations. She says: “B’jour Madame.” I ask where I should put her bras, she never answers me. The second says: “B’jour, b’soir, au r’voir,” but she’s won me over. In her bedroom, not a single cigarette butt; instead, in her drawer I found ten gnawed apple cores. I watch her cheerfully practicing her lessons as she chomps away at her fruit. The sight endears me to her despite her disdainful manner. There is also a delicious little boy with red hair who is quite easygoing and sweet. The two of us chat together happily.

Madame is about my age. She has barricaded herself behind a ridiculous facade of dignity and rigidity. She forgets sometimes and smiles, but corrects herself quickly. I am the maid. Madame says: “B’jour.” When I arrive, I say: “Nice day, huh!”

I see the man of the house when I enter, as he leaves for his neurology clinic. He’s the one who hired me. He’s very tall. They all are, actually, in this family. He is level-headed and his gestures are measured; he has blue eyes filled with such kindness that I can’t imagine him doing anything wrong. Madame is volatile, I think, but all women are.

June 2, 1962

It’s been two months now since I became a maid, and it’s not fun, Carolina. Leopards don’t change their spots; to my mistress, I talk about things other than polish, Marseille soap, and clothespins. I think she’s disappointed. Her friend has “one” who speaks French very poorly and is very naive—how sweet! I seem strange to her, it makes her nervous and a little mean. She asks me:

“Have you finished the vestibule?”

“Yes, Madame.”

That’s the signal; she takes a dusty rug and starts to shake it out in the very place that I’ve just made nice and shiny! So then I have to start all over again. If I tell my husband he’ll yell, “Stay home!” and break my moped. If I stayed home I would never be able to see just how far human stupidity goes.

On Monday I clean the living room from top to bottom. I have to start by brushing a heavy rug by hand. Apparently the vacuum ruins the fibers of the precious decoration. I think it’s really so she can see me bent down on the floor. On Tuesday, when everything is gleaming, Madame does her mending and hundreds of little pieces of thread embed themselves in the wool of the rug that I’ve just spent so much time cleaning. She says thoughtlessly: “I have to remember to put an old sheet down in front of my mending chair!” She’s so forgetful! And so I go to fetch the vacuum, but she says: “I need the vacuum for the living room! Take the little brush!” Break your back, my girl, I’m paying you two francs per hour for it. I am a voluntary guinea pig; I suppress my desire to hang my apron on the wall and begin the brushing again.

I wonder how it must be for my sisters who have nowhere to take refuge in case of revolt, who are forced to spend night and day in the company of such awful women because they have to pay back the cost of their journey! It’s atrocious. Carolina, when you bend yourself over the trash, at least you have no one hovering over you to make sure you break yourself in two, and you’re lucky for that, you know! When I get home, I can’t lie down just yet. I have the kids to teach, to slap, to feed, and to love. Fortunately, that helps me forget about my lady.

Pentecost 1962

The afternoons at my mistress’s house are terrible; she is becoming more and more irritable. I was so ready for my two days of vacation! Now they’re here and I’m taking full advantage. I, a girl of the wind and wide-open spaces, am forced to spin in circles in a huge apartment with closed shutters. When I enter the young girls’ rooms, I’m hit with nausea; I rush to the windows and open them if the lady of the house isn’t keeping watch, because she can’t stand daylight. In these conditions, I long for the mistral to blow and cleanse this hermetically sealed house. I vacuum and my stomach churns, nausea washes over me from all those smells mixed together: perfume, sweat, food.

But I have my revenge. I take the schoolchildren’s path home. I walk the ten kilometers to my suburb, passing through flower-filled neighborhoods. I return home and I feel happy, genuinely happy, much more so than if I had stayed home all day working on some meager task of sewing or ironing. The few hours that I spend away make me appreciate my house, and I am glad to return! Even if I have to do a few extra hours of work to make up for lost time. Winter and summer, the good Lord finds a way to enter my home. I like cleaning with large buckets of cool water, making the rooms smell of lemongrass. If I were rich I would shun windows that gather dust and multi-storied houses overlooking bustling boulevards. I would have a sun-filled house in the countryside, far from the noise of engines, and I would listen to the wind sing through the tall trees all around.

But I’m a maid, Carolina, and I twist and turn amid the stench of socks, floor polish, and air freshener, books they don’t even have time to read, and young girls who never swim in the pool or go on walks.

I arrive home still feeling confined. I say to the children: “Go on, quickly, breathe,” and I open up my house so that the sun enters through all the bay windows. The worst part for a maid, I think, is the smell of other people’s lives. Despite my fatigue, I sit down in the sun, near a window, after I’ve fed the household, and I think of you. I picture you, hair wrapped in a headscarf, nailing down the floorboards of your shack, and I feel energized. The children continue to swipe my pencils, but the book progresses.

I filled out all the pages of my first notebook and I’m elated. Carolina, to know how to string words together, make sentences, and be able to read them, even if what we write is pidgin or gobbledegook! It brings an incredible sense of relief. What I do comes with its difficulties: there is always a kid moaning around me and another laughing. Among them I have two supporters: they peruse my pages, they ripped out two that seemed interesting to them, “to read in bed.” My daughter found the blank pages of my new notebook perfect for drawing. I got angry, I told them that if I didn’t have paper to write on, or if I was missing parts of my story, it would never become a book. Now they prowl around my blank or marked-up pages and no longer dare touch them.

There has even been some moderate progress with my husband: he laughs less, he calls me “my writer.” “My writer! Bring me my socks!” “My writer, make us a cake?” I drop my Bic pen and I make a cake. But when he leaves, early in the morning, and my supporters are still asleep, and my daughter dreams of drawing without doing so, I relish those moments: only the owl in the old pine tree disturbs the silence; I am in my element. Perhaps it is very fortunate to be able to dictate your thoughts to secretaries and have advisors to catch your mistakes, but it holds far less appeal!

June 30, 1962

Carolina, they say that the future belongs to those who wake up in the morning. I have always woken up in the morning, but when the poor wake up it’s not a question of the future but of the present. Carolina, if my feet are swollen after an afternoon of ironing, I have to massage them right away, because tomorrow I’ll need to be nimble to climb the ladder: there are dozens of window panes I’ll have to make gleam again. And most importantly, I need my feet to be in good shape to climb the eight floors of my apartment building: the elevator is out of service. The future, for you and for me, is a matter of the present.

Madame noticed that I like the spirit and the mistral of the Holy Mother to purify the atmosphere of her alcove. She tightly closed all the shutters. In the vestibule the thermometer shows 30 degrees Celsius, and it’s the coolest room in the apartment. She turned on her fluorescent lights. I was perspiring, pushing my broom and my mop. Sweat was beading on my forehead, running into my eyelids; with a swipe of my hand, I stopped it. Thinking this gesture undignified, I chucked everything on the floor and took my handkerchief from my bag. Madame, sprawled on an armchair near a fan, said to me: “So, you think this is hot? In your country it’s worse, and it’s nonstop.” Leaning on my broom, I told her about the immense shade cast by the mango trees, the coolness brought by the trade wind, and the windows open to welcome that wind, the shutters sucking in the air, the rivers, how we take baths in the sea. She listened to me attentively, then scowled.

I told myself that the time had come to leave. But then I felt pity. The girls failed their exams. Right now Madame is like all the mothers of the world. She felt anguish waiting for those notorious exams, pain and disappointment at seeing her children fail. Pain out of love for one’s own, and disappointment out of pride: she had already spoken to her friends about the party she was going to throw if her children passed. When life has spoiled us, how can we not be prideful? I wanted to say something kind to her, but I worried about being clumsy. I looked at her withdrawn into her armchair and, withdrawn into my own thoughts, said nothing.

September 1, 1962

I will replace someone in a bourgeois house until the fifteenth. The lady is a little shrimp, she has to lift her nose to look at me even though she’s perched on incredibly high heels. She is a pied noir and kind. Like her husband, she is a professor; she is exuberant and speaks in melodious streams of words! He is discreet and quiet. I’ve noticed that the men of the house always tend to be better than their wives, but these two seem well matched in terms of character and so much the better.

They have four daughters, ranging from one to eleven years old. Their bedrooms are like junk rooms! When I entered one I gasped in surprise. Blue jeans hung from coat racks, dirty clothes on the floor, shoes on the nightstands. In the closets, empty tins of candy, and perfume bottles cluttering the immense library. If I’d had a chance to get “fully” involved, I would begin by giving two good slaps to those unruly little ladies and, centimeter by centimeter, I would instill order in this place. But oh well, there are too many things to do in three hours and so, stunned, I observe these Marie-Chantals. Monsieur and Madame are away and the daughters call the shots: they come and go as they please, with their friends.

Carolina, what an experiment this is turning out to be! In a newspaper I saw an ad for a typist. I went there in person, the office manager told me that the position had been filled. She looked at me with astonishment; I understood that she was surprised by my skin color. That’s how it is, unfortunately, in the provinces: you say that you can properly type up commercial or administrative correspondence, then they tell you that they want someone with experience. You say that you have experience in spades and that you pride yourself on a job well done, because of the liability of your colored skin—you know what I mean! We can’t give them any opportunity to say that those Black women are all useless. We must do our work well, for the sake of all the other Black women the world over. Then they tell you to come back again, or “we’ll be in touch.” Then you’ve had enough and you go to an employment agency for cleaning women if you’re in a rush to earn a living. There, the employment agent will be all smiles; the sight of a dark-skinned woman delights her: “Oh! You’re looking for work? Don’t leave! There is Madame So-and-So, Madame Thingamajig, Madame Whatshername, looking for someone like you.”

The employment agent doesn’t say: “She would like a negress,” she doesn’t dare. She doesn’t ask for your references, if you are lucky enough to be Caribbean. The Caribbeans, because of their ancestry, are hard workers. And you will be placed with Mme Thingamajig and her Marie-Chantals and you will watch them live. The office manager told me that the full-time typist position was filled, but asked me if I knew anyone who wanted to take on a few hours with a family. “You understand,” she added, “they’re interested in someone like you.” There was something indecent about that request, but Carolina, such is life. I said: “I’m free for a little while until school starts, I’ll do it!” She found nothing unusual about it and hurried to give me the address of her friends. Just like that!

September 17, 1962

While I was writing my last note to you, Carolina, leaning over my washing machine (I need a quiet corner), my husband, chock full of discouragement, told me that I was writing a flop, that I shouldn’t talk about things that are none of my concern. If nothing is anyone’s concern, the word egoism has more meaning than ever. And he thinks that I flip through my dictionary too often, he says that novelists don’t need a dictionary. Spitefully, he added: “Your book is a rotten papaya! Flowers in the wind! It will never bear fruit! You should write about snack bars, pools! Bronzed girls swimming at the beach, people like that! Who do you think will be interested in the stories of negroes?” I could have become discouraged. But, Carolina, I picture you writing by the light of a candle, without even the presence of someone to tell you what kind of papaya you are, so I bend over a new page and I fill it with reality.

January 6, 1963

Cécile arrived in the “West Indies” of France: she traversed the country from Le Havre to Marseille searching for sun. The sun is there, and always will be, but it is frozen by the wind that blows over Mount Ventoux before rushing through Marseille; the cold penetrates the thickest coats and everyone seems to have an invisible pipe, smoke blows out of our nostrils and our mouths. This natural steam frightens Cécile, she came to tell me.

Each time, I swear I’ll mind my own business: why did she need to come to Europe when the temperature drops to negative eight here and the wild boars are a stone’s throw away in Provence? They emerge from the forests looking for food and instead meet their deaths. All the butcher shops in town serve them up, and even sell squirrels by the half-dozen. They’re easy to hunt in this season. Did Cécile not know this? Someone gave her my address, someone is always giving out my address to West Indian women having problems. I’m not happy about it.

Carolina, each time I decide to be horribly selfish, God punishes me and sends me some food for thought. Well, when I saw Cécile this morning, her long fingers horribly swollen, all I could do was tell her to come in and wait for her torment to subside. She was a certified accountant in Fort-de-France, she even had a maid. She made the rounds of the employment agencies in town, she was sent from one job to another: they took one look at her dark Black skin and said politely, “I’ll be in touch.” The first week of December, she waited, she didn’t know what “I’ll be in touch” really means in France, and then she must have accepted her fate, because she needed to pay for her little room in Le Panier.

She took a job ironing in a sordid laundry in her neighborhood. She lived in the steam spewed by her iron that sprayed water of its own free will. And then she agreed, to earn some more money, to wash a baby’s clothes when she arrives home at night to her room with no heat. The result was not long in coming: chilblains all over her hands and feet. As she talks to me, she rubs her feet together to relieve her itching. She looks at her fingers, ready to burst, and a tear pearls on her long lashes. I can’t start crying with her, what good would that do? I put on my hard shell and said: “This is how it is in France, what did you expect? Not everyone has a manicure like the Baker girl, and to earn your bread you’ll have to work and take care of your hands and feet. First things first, put your suitcase in my daughter’s bedroom. Get out of Le Panier, or you’ll die of depression before the end of winter. Warm yourself up, I’ll go to the neighborhood biscuit factory to get you a handler job, that will tide you over until your fiancé returns from Laos. On that note, why did he have you come so early, since he still has six months left over there?”

Cécile understood from my gruff tone that this was an order. I absolutely had to fix her gears, which had been jammed by winter. As I write to you, she comes and goes, and I even saw a smile light up her ebony skin. Carolina, do you find me ridiculous? By this time next year she will only be a memory, but the present moment is enough. It’s cold, a girl from my country is warming her body and heart under my roof, come what may.

February 6, 1963

Cécile’s fiancé arrives at the end of April; she is ecstatic. With a feverish hand, she caresses her white wedding dress that an expert seamstress fashioned for her. I had never seen the dress, she didn’t dare show it before her wedding date was set. It will take place in early May with the blooming of the daisies, lilacs, and peach blossoms. It will certainly be more cheerful than in winter.

February 18, 1963

I saw a classified ad posted on the scale at the bakery: someone is soliciting a cleaning woman two days per week. I asked for more information and learned that an old woman living alone, not far from my house, is looking for an aide. The long, long winter has trapped her inside her little apartment. Carolina, I didn’t go for the sake of loving one’s neighbor; I wanted to earn 600 francs in two hours, and it was nearby! But there you have it. I was shaking out everything in that shack with its piles of dust, I scrubbed the parquet floor and scoured two full tubs of pots and pans while the little old lady told me about her misfortunes; her children no longer look after her, she lives on nothing but her old-age pension. I listened to her, I worked hard; the grandma doesn’t have a washing machine, and I had to deal with a half-dozen sheets. Two hours weren’t enough to put the place back in order. The little old lady anxiously consulted the old clock:

“It’s time!” she cried. “Two hours is enough!”

“You’ve got to be kidding, two hours! This place needs days, grandma! You’ve neglected the apartment for three months.”

She counted and recounted the coins for me and asked herself what kind of “stubborn mule” had invaded her home.

So she spoke to me in pidgin to explain that she only had 600 francs. I said: “All right grandma, I’m finished: keep the 600 francs for a nice pot-au-feu! I’ll pay you a visit sometime!”

She couldn’t believe it, and was so afraid that I wouldn’t come back again that she cried:

“I can give you 600 francs for a month, two times per week: by the end of March, I’ll be back on my feet and I hope social services will send me to a nursing home.”

“It’s okay! You aren’t satisfied with having a cleaning lady for free for a month? It’s pretty unusual, and I typically charge a lot, you know! When the ladies see my seventy-two kilos, they hire me on the spot, and I take their money without hesitating. They’re not mean, but they’re imbeciles. But you, grandma, I wouldn’t eat what I bought with your money. And to think that your children are ladies strutting about somewhere without a care for you!”

That’s why, Carolina, I have a lot on my plate for the next month.

March 30, 1963

Finally, I can put away my boots and my muff. Slyly, on the edge of the road, little daisies thrust up toward the sun. In the courtyard of my little grandma’s house, there is a lilac plant that was completely bare the last time; I glimpsed fat flies on its skeletal branches! I approached to observe this phenomenon up close and I spotted buds preparing to adorn the bush, despite the cold and this year’s unending frost. I also saw a bird soaring through the sky: it might have been a swallow! Marseille is coming back to life, and women on park benches knit in the sun. I opened all the windows to welcome the first warm sun of the year and I turned off the heat. Carolina, I can’t describe the effect that the changing of seasons has, it’s an endless marvel for me, so used to a country without winter. I am happy to see people without overcoats enjoying the nice weather. When the pétanque players take out their boules, my joy will reach its apex, because this will mean that the season of cold winds is officially over.

Grandma couldn’t believe it! I packed her suitcases, polished her kitchen, and accompanied her on the bus to a nursing home near the Durance. She gave me a crocheted doily that she said she made herself. I couldn’t refuse, it would have offended her. She assured me that she wouldn’t forget me in her prayers, she was sincere. Her formerly blue eyes misted over with tears, I was emotional too. I turned around and cried: “See you soon! Six months go by quickly! I’ll write to you!”

In that old white woman abandoned by her family I saw my own mother who, in another land, might need help, support. On the bus home, I prayed: “Dear Lord, protect those I love from solitude and neglect.”

May 1, 1963

It’s International Workers Day and there are lilies of the valley everywhere, even ones made out of plastic. Those will last a long time, and the delicious wait for this beautiful month will lose its meaning because each day those odorless sprigs will be there to remind them that May once was.

We’re getting ready for the wedding here, everyone has their dress clothes. There is sun everywhere, and I pity those who can’t take the time to enjoy it.

May 5, 1963

They are married! The whole neighborhood lined up on the church parvis! Cécile was beautiful in her white dress; a spectator said rather loudly: “I didn’t know gowns suited Black women so well! See how good they look?” We looked more than good! I would even say we looked elegant! All those handsome men invited by the fiancé made more than one woman who claims not to like negroes swoon. Solange told me that as we climbed into her little car with two of my children. And then we danced, we forgot the ladies, we forgot our bitterness. We thought of nothing but the happiness of Cécile, who spoke of going back to our country as soon as possible. And then she packed up and left in the night. This morning there’s nothing left but empty bottles, languishing flowers, and the remnants of the feast to remind me that from now on she’s a part of the past.

May 6, 1963

Cécile had been bold enough to write and it yielded an unexpected result: the literary agent answered me. On the beautiful envelope with the company’s logo, he typed: “Maméga, woman of letters.” I sat down on the doorstep, my legs buckling with emotion, and I reread those words, “woman of letters,” I rubbed my eyes to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. It was really written there: “Maméga, woman of letters.” I called the children: “Come quick! Look what’s written on this envelope!” One of them read it and asked me who I had made letters for. I didn’t correct him, I just said: “For a man! Look what’s inside!”

Surrounded by my brood, I awaited the literary agent’s negative verdict. He had probably written “woman of letters” to give me the courage to stomach the rest: “You are an imbecile,” or something along those lines. But then my kid started to read and I had to tug on my ears, Carolina, to make sure they were really mine, as the little one said: “Madame, I read the excerpts of your manuscript with great pleasure, and I eagerly await the rest. So much poetry and real charm emanates from these pages.” The youngest was reading, the others listening. The letter was all praise and encouragement. The agent ended with these words: “The errors in this text should be corrected in order to present it to a publisher…”

My daughter said: “He’s buying your book!”

One of her brothers jumped for joy and said: “So, you won’t have to go to ladies’ homes anymore, and we’ll get to meet Mama Doudou!”

Isn’t it the dream of all transplanted children to meet their grandmother? Most of them never knew her, or will never know what it means to have an aunt or an uncle of their own, and when their classmates casually mention going to their grandmother’s house or outings with their grandfather, they feel frustrated. I always tell them: “When we have enough money, we’ll go to Grandmother’s house!”

Maybe you won’t believe me, Carolina, but each time I’ve amassed some savings, it melts away like snow in the sun, because Easter blooms and I don’t want my little Martinicans born in Marseille to be less spring-like than the others, or Christmas arrives just as I’ve paid off their new school clothes. It doesn’t upset me, because this is the case for many more families than people think. But what pains me is when my family asks about Grandmother: “What is Mama Doudou like? Does she have white hair?”

I describe her little house under an enormous plum tree, her hens that peck at your feet. The eldest told me to bet on horse-racing. I never do, because it’s too hard to win a few francs, I don’t win, but I don’t lose either. So now I tell them: “When I’ve written an entire library of books, I’ll have enough money and we’ll go see Grandmother.”

Today I’m on the first book of my library and my children are already thinking about Grandmother. There was something comical about it, Carolina, we were all there on the doorstep, forgetting to enter the house, too eager to devise this lovely plan, the children wouldn’t let me budge. And then Papa arrived, he leaned his moped against the plane tree on the side of the road. The children swarmed him and yelled: “We’re going to Martinique to see Mama Doudou!”

Imperturbable, he answered: “Is that so! If it’s not Santa bringing the caravel this time, what is it?”

They all wanted to be the one to tell him, the letter, the man who wrote the letter, the things written in the letter!

He didn’t miss a beat; he said to me: “How much will it cost you to publish your scribbling! Did you think of that?” And to the children: “You should all be thinking about finding good jobs, if you want to pay for the publication of your mama’s book! In the meantime, enough messing around.”

His words were like a cold shower. And it’s a good thing, because there is an entire world between dream and reality.