Addie E. Citchens's debut novel exposes the hypocrisies of a Mississippi church
In «Les Révérentes», the American writer follows two women caught in the grip of a Black Baptist congregation ruled by appearances, as reported by Le Temps.
Addie E. Citchens, born in Mississippi and still living in the Deep South, in New Orleans, draws on her own upbringing for her first novel, «Les Révérentes». As she tells Le Temps, her earliest community was "l'Eglise, dans toute son horreur et sa grandeur," and the book grew, she says, from her early observations of the hypocrisies built into that institution: "Les hommes dirigeaient en paroles, non en actes, tandis que les femmes servaient, payaient la dîme et se disputaient leur propre oppression."
Citchens carried the novel for more than ten years before settling on what she calls the right ending for the final version. Before this book, her published work consisted of short stories in The New Yorker and The Paris Review.
The story is set in Dominion, a fictional small town in Mississippi described as a place "où il y a eu de la tristesse empilée sur de la peine empilée sur de la douleur." It centers on the Black Baptist congregation of the Seven Seals and its patriarch, the Reverend Sabre Winfrey, who holds spiritual authority over his flock while also running a small commercial empire that includes a hair salon, a conservative radio station and real estate holdings.
Winfrey and his wife Priscilla, known as "la Première dame," have five sons, the youngest of whom, Emmanuel, is a talented singer and a star of the school football team, nicknamed Wonderboy, for whom everything seems to come easily, much like his father. Behind this image of a pious, successful family, the novel traces how the varnish cracks, revealing that the goodness, morality and integrity the Winfreys display are not what they seem.
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