Profile
Good writers are good readers. As a teacher, Rose Réjouis encourages her students to explore literary history broadly while committing themselves to close readings. Lately, she and her students have been extending their close readings into the realm of audio-visual storytelling and mixed media.
Prominent critical reviews of my work:
• Cover of The New York Times Book Review essay by Leonard Michaels of the translation with of Patrick Chamoiseau's novel, Texaco.
• The New Yorker review by John Updike of the translation of Patrick Chamoiseau's novel, Texaco.
• The New York Times review by Holland Cotter of "Négritude," an art exhibit I curated at Exit art. In this experimental multi-media and multi-disciplinary show (supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Council for the Humanities), I presented the work of Vladimir Cybil Charlier and Wura-Natasha Ogunji, as evidence of the history of "dark play" embodied in Aimé Césaire's practice of Négritude.
• The Guardian's Homage ("On How Fiction can make it new" by Garth Risk Hallberg) to the translation of Patrick Chamoiseau's novel, Texaco.
• New York Times Review article by Richard Bernstein on the translation of Patrick Chamoiseau's novel, Solibo Magnificent.
• The New York Book Times review by Caryl Phillips of the translation of Patrick Chamoiseau's Solibo Magnificent
• New York Review of Books review by Derek Walcott of the translation of Patrick Chamoiseau's Texaco
• The New Republic review by Caryl Philips of the translation of Patrick Chamoiseau's Texaco.
Degrees Held
Ph.D., Romance Languages and Literatures, Princeton University.
B.A., Amherst College, French and English.
OTHER ACADEMIC EXPERIENCES
Ecole Normale Supérieure (dissertation research, semester as externe while doing PhD at Princeton)
Université de Paris-Sorbonne (Etudiante Etrangère - one semester, while a B.A. student at Amherst)
Institut d’Etudes de Sciences Politiques (Etudiante Etrangère - one semester, while a B.A. student at Amherst)
Professional Affiliation
Modern Literary Association
Recent Publications
• Essays in N+1: "Circle of Visibility," "In Thrall," (2021), "Hidden Fortress," Ogresse" (2019), "You can't read,"(2018), "Letter to Freud" (2018)
•"Wild Solidarity," in Untranslatability Goes Global edited by Jill Levine and Katie Jan (forthcoming from Routledge Press)
• "Tasks Without Solutions: Why Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams Matters to Translation Culture," Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, Number 45 (November 2014).
• "Dark Horse Poetics: Lévi-Strauss, Benitez-Rojo, and Caribbean Epistemology, Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, Volume 18, Number 43 (March 2014).
• “Négritude as Dark Play,” an essay for the catalogue of the art exhibit, “Négritude,” I curated at Exit Art (New York, May 20-July 25, 2009).
• “Object Lessons: Metaphors of Literary Agency in Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Task of the Translator’ and Patrick Chamoiseau’s Solibo Magnifique,” French Literature Series, 2009.
• “Sharp Minds, Raw Hearts,” preface to Love, Anger, Madness by Marie Vieux-Chauvet, translated by Réjouis/Vinokur (New York: Modern Library, 2009).
I also write regularly for the French journal, Esprit. Here is a list of my most recent essays in French.
•. 'Black Face et Encre Invisibile," Février 2020.
• La Forteresse Cachée, ESPRIT, June 2018
•Lire Poe dans L'Obscurité, ESPRIT, March 2018.
• Ecrire nos pensées sauvages ESPRIT, March 2018.
• Mea Res Agitur [An Open Letter to Freud]. ESPRIT, January 2018.
• Le Mauvais Lycée ESPRIT, January 2018.
• "Tu ne sais pas lire" ESPRIT, March/April 2017:
BOOK
• Veillées pour les mots [Wakes for Words] : Aimé Césaire, Patrick Chamoiseau et Maryse Condé (Paris: Karthala, 2005).
TRANSLATIONS
• Love, Anger, Madness , three novellas by Marie Vieux-Chauvet (New York: Modern Library, August 2009).
• Texaco , novel by Patrick Chamoiseau (New York: Pantheon Books, 1997), (London: Granta, 1998), (New York: Vintage Books, 1998). Reviewed by John Updike (New Yorker), Leonard Michaels (cover of The New York Times Book Review), Derek Walcott (NYRB), Caryl Phillips (New Republic); reviews in NYT, LA Times, TLS, London Review, Chicago Tribune, etc.
• Solibo Magnificent, novel by Patrick Chamoiseau (New York: Pantheon Books, 1997), (New York: Anchor Books, 1999), (London: Granta, 2000). Reviewed by Richard Bernstein (NYT), Caryl Phillips (NYTBR), Salon, African American Review, etc.
Performances and Appearances
• "Touching the Distance": A conversation on Translating Chamoiseau. As part of the Literary Translation series organized by Susan Bernofsky. Columbia University, April 2018.
• Guest on discussion panel for a discussion of The Complete Poetry of Aimé Césaire, La Maison Française, Columbia University, November 2017. Organizer: Brent Hayes Edward.
• "Freud's Cracked Mirror." An essay framed by Leonard Baskin's quote: "Our human frame, our gutted mansion, our enveloping sack of beef and ash is yet a glory. I hold the cracked mirror up to man." Association for Jewish Studies, 2016.
• “Dark and Dangerous Fiction: A discussion between Rose Réjouis and Edwidge Danticat." Introduction by Tiphanie Yanique. Organized by Miriam Ticktin and the Gender Studies Program at The New School (February 2014).
• “Translating the Savage: Léry and Lévi-Strauss,” La Maison Française, New York University (Spring 2013). Organized by Emmanuelle Ertel.
• “Freud’s Moses and Césaire’s Toussaint Louverture” UC Davis (February 2012).
• “Celebrating Marie Vieux-Chauvet’s Reading of her own Work,” keynote address at Florida Atlantic University conference: Haiti and the Americas (October 2010). Organized by Raphael Dalleo.
• “Staging Sacrifice: Reading Marie Vieux-Chauvet Again,” Yale University (spring 2010). Organized by Chris Miller.
Research Interests
Rose Réjouis is interested in African oral law and literature, African mythology, cultural politics and translation, childhood narratives, visual storytelling, as well as French and Caribbean literature. She studies the narrative strategies of ethnic and social insider-outsiders, particularly as those narratives veer between history and romance, utopia and dystopia. As a literary critic, she immerses herself in the "deep play" between ideas and literary structures; and her translations offer insights into the fruitful tensions between idiomatic and idiosyncratic uses of language.
Awards And Honors
American Translation Association Lewis Galantière Prize for Best Book
Princeton University Fellowship
Amherst College Fellowship
The Amherst College Frederick King Turgeon Prize (For a senior who has done particularlary distinguished work in French)