Quote by Joseph Zobel: “The land is ours. We will die on it before we leave it.”

For people whose labor built the land they work — and whose ancestors were brought in chains to cultivate it — attachment to that land is not sentimental. It is a claim of justice: this place was made by us, and we belong here as much as any owner who holds a title.

La Rue Cases-Nègres was published in 1950 when Martinique was transitioning from a colony to a French overseas department. The sugar economy was declining but the social hierarchies it had created remained intact, and Zobel documented the lives of agricultural workers whose relationship to the land was both economic dependence and deep belonging.

Martinican novelist best known for his 1950 novel La Rue Cases-Nègres, which depicts the life of a young Black boy in the sugarcane plantations of Martinique. The novel was adapted into the 1983 film Sugar Cane Alley, which won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival.