On November 24, MansA is organizing a meeting to discuss the poetry collection Odyssée de la Vénus Noire (Gallimard, 2025), in the presence of its author Robin Coste Lewis and filmmaker Alice Diop, who wrote the theatrical adaptation.
For the second edition of its Book Club, MansA offers an exchange with Robin Coste Lewis, winner of the National Book Award and a major voice of American poetry, and director Alice Diop, who is adapting the work for the stage with Le Voyage de la Vénus Noire, presented at the MC93 from November 19 to 30 as part of the Festival d'Automne.
At night, a black woman dreams her way through the museums of the world. She tracks down faces, bodies and faded traces. With Odyssey of the Black Venus (Gallimard, 2025), Robin Coste Lewis has written an extraordinary poem.
Woven from archives and written in the form of a triptych, the text gives rise to the figure of the black female body. At the center of the book is a monumental poem, composed entirely of titles of works, labels and fragments of catalogs. This relentless montage reveals the extent to which the Western gaze has deformed and fetishized black bodies. But this journey is also a song, a revolt. Between lyricism and criticism, Robin Coste Lewis demonstrates a rare audacity, inviting us, at last, to look differently. She turns frames upside down and opens up a new space: here, the black woman's body is no longer reduced to an object of display. It becomes the subject of speech and power.
Born in California, Robin Coste Lewis won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2015 for Voyage of the Sable Venus; she is now a leading voice in American poetry. Alice Diop has made a name for herself with internationally acclaimed documentaries and fiction films, including Vers la tendresse (César Award 2017), La Permanence (Grand Prix Cinéma du réel 2017), Nous (Berlinale 2021), and Saint Omer (Silver Lion at Venice, César Award 2023).
