À fleur de peau (On Edge ) By Joël Té-Léssian 'I keep my pride and shame for the acts that I commit. I have no reason to be proud of being born with malaria, I do not see why I should be proud of being born black - or be ashamed, either. I did not so much thank or insult my parents, if you like, but leave me in peace.'

I have a strange relationship, not very brotherly, with my skin. A friend, looking somber and sad voice of one who performs a dirty but necessary job, I was once out: "Your problem is you got ashamed of your skin!" That's not all very true: it annoys me. Because it heals poorly.

I am often on my bowl "memory". No donations here. Just hard work helps me to learn  about myself. It keeps track of all the bites, blemishes, wounds, burns, all abscesses, pimples and boils. When I look at my legs and I see my childhood: the yellow spots surrounded by black rings? Allergies to the snail. Prohibited meat, so put the first order. A thousand times my guests are warned that they should not use it a hundred times, I could consume. My small wounds appeared so vile that healed after a week, but left a mark that was enough for me to contemplate any revival: the smell of the kitchen, looking sorry for the lady of the house.

A dark spot in the lower back: a bullying more violent than others, to twelve, that reminds me of the injustice of life in Prytaneum, confinement, anger suppressed. Withered skin around the neck fools taking risks to sixteen, stupid needs to prove his manhood. (Or a suicide attempt - thus the "neighborhood" is explained during the holidays, I let the rumor run: you cannot imagine the tranquility enjoyed by the "suicidal.")

The red circles on his chest? New allergy, never fully diagnosed, chopée on an island in Brazil. I brushed and they raised up the scent of Caipiroska, the green sky of Recife, the bodies of women that I have not had. Everything is there: my mind on edge. Which leaves me forgetting nothing. At any moment, even the most joyous, most pure, I just look down to a memory I come back, sometimes happy, often painful and unpleasant. I related the scene, so the names, faces, emotions, relationships, everything is connected. All that is detestable.

Also (and this is the sense of the criticism often addressed to me by the back door) because it precedes me everywhere and always speaks before me. In the street, she is ahead of six steps, challenges me and tells me when I train legs. It reduces the topics of conversation: Clichy will always come before Cartagena Yade before Yeats, the Zambezi before the Corrèze. The number of supposedly blissful smiles "accomplices" that sent me the day after Obama's election! "On" is here! ... It exposes me to the stupidity of others. It imposes on me the links that I should be free to choose - my birth, my education and culture would perhaps have anyway led to adopt, but the approach would have been different.

I prefer voluntary servitude to forced solidarity. They then shock my individualism and hamper my freedom. I do not claim anything. I do not "deny" anything. Most of those who have done nothing with their lives and who envisage anything, take refuge in the semantics of shame and pride. They cannot be "happy" or just "grateful" or "sad." No! They are "proud" of their flag, their country, their "origins" and have "shame" of the team in Gabon, they are "proud" of the American national anthem.

I keep my pride and shame for the acts that I commit. I have no reason to be proud of being born with malaria, I do not see why I should be proud of being born black - or be ashamed, either. I did not  so much  thank or insult my parents, if you like, but leave me in peace. I'm not completely fooled, either. Each year, about fifty studies (genetic, socio-economic "science") are published in the United States and Europe which seek to establish the intellectual inferiority of African Americans, Blacks, by extension. Sixty years after Auschwitz, such work continues. Am I worried? Not really. Outraged? ... Maybe ... I'm rather amused, amazed at such ingenuity. At best, indifferent. Romain Gary was asked what it meant for him to be Jewish. His response? "It's a way to piss me off!” Replace" Jew "with" Black "and you know my feeling.

Update: 
....its 2013 and I just realized being a Jew means coming from the tribe of Judah and Judah is black unto the ground; "Judah mourneth, and the gates thereof languish; they are black unto the ground; and the cry of Jerusalem is gone up." Jeremiah 14:2