Overview
Rights available."Something has happened. I have discovered the colour of my skin, my white skin. I am white and have no identity. I cannot stop myself from repeating this sentence, like a mantra. I am white and I don't have an identity. It is this lack which caused me to stand back in front of the Arab at the station, to fall apart during heathen funerals, to decline, as I have been doing, since the death of A. The discomfort at meeting blacks in the corridor can be explained in the light of this lack. I feel they have a stronger identity than mine. I do not have any resourcefulness. There is this emptiness inside me and I suppose it is found in every white person. I feel that I cannot summon anything which would transcend me: nor culture, nor glorious origins, nor sacredness. Only shame and grief. My existence in the world is decaying. No respectable collective identity is awaiting me, inside which I can lay down my pain. I don't even talk about my French identity, this lie. Identity comes from the skin. This anachronism is still true and fills me with unease."Very much noticed in autumn 2006 for his first novel Suppl?ment au roman national, Jean-?ric Boulin comes back with an amazing book. La question blanche is a novel which asks each of us to examine our identity. It is also a magnificent love story.Jean-Eric Boulin is thirty years old and comes from Marseilles. He published his first novel in 2006, Suppl?ment au roman national.
