French playwright, ethnographer, and educator Ina Césaire — daughter of Négritude exponent and politician Aimé Césaire and writer and scholar Suzanne Césaire — passed away on, June 24, 2025. Today, July 3, 2025, she was laid to rest in Martinique. Here are translated excerpts from Madinin’Art.
Ina Césaire, playwright, ethnographer, and university professor, died on Tuesday, June 24, 2025, in Martinique, at the age of 83.
Born in 1942, she was the daughter of Aimé Césaire, a poet and politician, and Suzanne Roussi Césaire, an essayist. She grew up in an intellectual environment marked by literary and political engagement, where questions of memory, culture, and identity were central.
Trained in ethnology, Ina Césaire began an academic career in France. A specialist in Creole and Fulani cultures, she taught in Paris at the Sorbonne, as well as in Moscow and the United States. She was a research director at the CNRS, where she conducted research on Caribbean cultures, before being appointed project manager for the conservation of Martinique’s heritage. She also produced ethnographic films, notably on the rites of Ash Wednesday and All Saints’ Day.
Her literary work, composed of stories, plays, novels, poetry, and essays, is rooted in a constant desire for cultural transmission. She collected and published traditional tales from Martinique and Guadeloupe, often in bilingual, Creole-French versions. Her works, such as Contes de mort et de vie aux Antilles (1976), Contes de nuits et de jours aux Antilles (1989), and Zonzon Tête Carrée (1994), provide a humorous and insightful account of the social, linguistic, and gender dynamics of Caribbean societies. In theatre, she authored several plays, including Mémoires d’Isles (1985), Rosanie Soleil (1992), and L’Enfant des passages (1993), which question memory, the relationship to colonial history, and the feminine voice. She also participated in the founding of the Théâtre de la Soif Nouvelle, contributing to the emergence of a contemporary Caribbean scene. [. . .]
Translated by Ivette Romero. Source: https://www.madinin-art.net/ina-cesaire-1942-2025/
Also see https://la1ere.franceinfo.fr/martinique/fort-france/ina-cesaire-la-faille-d-aimee-cesaire-est-morte-a-l-age-de-83-ans-1598805.html