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French Miss Africa Contests Proudly Celebrate Dual Cultures in Paris

Lyse Amissah (c) celebrates her 2024 victory. (AFP)
Lyse Amissah (c) celebrates her 2024 victory. (AFP)
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French Miss Africa Contests Proudly Celebrate Dual Cultures in Paris

Lyse Amissah (c) celebrates her 2024 victory. (AFP)
Lyse Amissah (c) celebrates her 2024 victory. (AFP)

The recent scene in a Paris theatre was loud and tumultuous with hundreds of spectators backing their favorites in the Miss Ivory Coast/France 2024 contest, one of many events at which France's African diaspora celebrate their dual culture.

"Our parents made beautiful children in Europe," remarked a master of ceremony as the 19 contestants took to the stage wearing, in turn, traditional wax dresses, swimsuits and evening wear.

After four hours of suspense, Lyse Amissah, contestant number 18, was declared the winner.

"I am very touched, grateful and proud," said the 22-year-old student who was born in Paris to Ivorian parents.

A few weeks earlier, during rehearsal, Amissah -- who wears her hair short and dyed blond -- said that the contest represented more than just winning a beauty pageant.

"It's a way to get as close to my roots as possible," she said, adding she had always been "steeped in Ivorian culture".

Flora Sy, president of the Miss Ivory Coast/France committee, said that although the contestants are "very proud" to be French, "it is also important for us to show our Ivorian culture".

Things weren't always this upbeat, remembered Mams Yaffa who organized the very first such African contest in France, Miss Mali/France in 2002.

- 'Role models' -

Casual xenophobia and racism were widespread at the time, including at the highest level of state.

The image of Malians was "horribly stigmatizing", said Yaffa, who is now deputy mayor in Paris's 18th district where many residents are of African background.

The first Miss Mali/France contest "provided the framework for activism" and the women competing were "role models for our younger sisters", he said.

Their activism was aimed at promoting hygiene, education and health, and to persuade women not to bleach their skin.

Topics today include illegal immigration. Miss Senegal/France recently talked with young people in Senegal "to convince them not to get into one of those boats", said Mamadou Thiam, who runs the Franco-Senegalese organizing committee.

Amissah is using her fame to help end the "taboo" surrounding endometriosis in Ivory Coast.

Close contacts created by the beauty contests between France and African countries sometimes contrasts with deteriorating diplomatic relations between France and some of its former colonies on the continent.

A recent example is Mali, where the military government asked French troops to leave after 10 years of anti-extremist missions there.

But Yaffa brushed off such tensions, saying his organization will never allow itself to become the "collateral damage" of diplomacy.

"The problem is governments, not the population," he said.

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Japanese Poet Shuntaro Tanikawa, Master of Modern Free Verse, Dies at 92

Shuntaro Tanikawa, a Japanese poet and translator, speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Tokyo, on May 25, 2022. (AP)
Shuntaro Tanikawa, a Japanese poet and translator, speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Tokyo, on May 25, 2022. (AP)
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Japanese Poet Shuntaro Tanikawa, Master of Modern Free Verse, Dies at 92

Shuntaro Tanikawa, a Japanese poet and translator, speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Tokyo, on May 25, 2022. (AP)
Shuntaro Tanikawa, a Japanese poet and translator, speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Tokyo, on May 25, 2022. (AP)

Shuntaro Tanikawa, who pioneered modern Japanese poetry, poignant but conversational in its divergence from haiku and other traditions, has died. He was 92.

Tanikawa, who translated the "Peanuts" comic strip and penned the lyrics for the theme song of the animation series "Astro Boy," died Nov. 13, his son Kensaku Tanikawa said Tuesday. He said his father died at a Tokyo hospital due to old age.

Shuntaro Tanikawa stunned the literary world with his 1952 debut "Two Billion Light Years of Solitude," a bold look at the cosmic in daily life, sensual, vivid but simple in its use of everyday language. Written before Gabriel García Márquez’ "One Hundred Years of Solitude," it became a bestseller.

Tanikawa’s "Kotoba Asobi Uta," or "Word Play Songs," is a rhythmical experiment in juxtaposing words that sound similar, such as "kappa," a mythical animal and "rappa," a horn, that makes for a joyful singsong compilation, filled with alliterations and onomatopoeia.

"For me, the Japanese language is the ground. Like a plant, I place my roots, drink in the nutrients of the Japanese language, sprouting leaves, flowers and bearing fruit," he said in a 2022 interview with The Associated Press at his Tokyo home.

Tanikawa explored the poetic, not only in the repetitive music of the spoken word but also the magic hidden in little things.

One of his works is titled, "I wanted to talk to you in the kitchen in the middle of the night."

"In the past, there was something about it being a job, being commissioned. Now, I can write as I want," he said.

In every work Tanikawa tackled, including the script for Kon Ichikawa’s "Tokyo Olympiad," a documentary film of the 1964 Tokyo Games, the respectful love for the beauty of the Japanese language resonates.

He also translated Mother Goose, Maurice Sendak and Leo Lionni. Tanikawa has in turn been widely translated, including English, Chinese and various European languages.

Some of his works were made into picture books for children, and they are often featured in Japanese school textbooks. He also incorporated Japanese words derived from foreign origins into his poems like Coca-Cola.

In his prose poem with that title, in which a boy is opening a Coke can, he wrote: "If, for instance, he saw the infinite universe that started or ended at the tip of his can, he was totally unaware of it. One might be able to opine that he named every bit of the unknown about to swallow him with all the vocabulary he could muster, which included his future vocabulary that was yet dormant in his subconscious."

In his debut poem that catapulted him to stardom, he is more sparse:

"Because the universe goes on expanding, we are all uneasy. With the chill of two billion light-years of solitude, I suddenly sneezed," is the way the poem ends, as translated by William I. Elliott and Kazuo Kawamura.

When asked about it, Tanikawa acknowledged it felt as though someone else had written it, but noted he still thought it was a good poem.

"Tanikawa’s poetry reflects a metaphysical and quasi-religious attitude toward experience. In simple, spare language, he sketches profound ideas and emotional truths," according to the Poetry Foundation, a US literary organization.

Tanikawa was born in 1931, a son of philosopher Tetsuzo Tanikawa, and began writing poetry in his teens, circulating with the famous poets of that era, like Makoto Ooka and Shuji Terayama.

He said he used to think poems descended like an inspiration from the heavens. But, as he grew older, he felt the poems welling up from the ground.

In person, Tanikawa was friendly and unassuming, often reading in public with other poets. He never seemed to take himself too seriously but used to confess his one regret in life was never finishing his education, having dropped out amid stardom at a young age.

His relative isolation from the bleakly serious scholarly poetry scene of postwar Japan likely helped him take his free-verse approach that went on to innovate and define Japanese contemporary poetics.

Tanikawa said he wasn’t afraid of death, implying he perhaps meant to write a poem about that experience, too.

"I am more curious about where I will go when I die. It’s a different world, right? Of course, I don’t want pain. I don’t want to die after major surgery or anything. I just want to die, all of a sudden," he said.

He is survived by his son, musician Kensaku Tanikawa and daughter Shino and several grandchildren. Funeral services were held privately with family and friends. A farewell event in his honor is being planned, Kensaku Tanikawa said.

"As they did with all of you, Shuntaro’s poems stunned and moved me, making me chuckle or shed a tear. Wasn’t it all so fun?" he said. "His poems are with you forever."