Fatoumata M'Binté and Aouicha Traoré launched their first “suburban youth book fair” this Saturday in Vigneux-sur-Seine. Around fifty authors and publishing houses from Switzerland, Belgium, Guadeloupe and Reunion Island responded.
By midday, more than 400 visitors had already been registered. The two women met and launched the Ode to Literature association at the end of 2022. The objective is to promote literature, poetry and the art of oratory among children. They hope to then be able to do it in all the suburbs of France. The fair focuses on the representation of diversity in children's books, “it's moving in the right direction. It is up to us to write our history,” says FatouMata. “It is important that people from diverse backgrounds write, to have North African, black, Asian heroes… But there are still obstacles because if there are more and more of them, they are not always the main characters. It has to become normal.”