We will never know from which part of Africa this story begins, yet we do know that everything starts around 1750.
A child is born, her name is Bayangumay. She knows a rather joyful childhood and, conforming to the traditions of her people, accepts without drama to become the wife of her father’s companion, Dyadyu. She is rather happy and the future seems bright. But the arrival of the Whites will stain this picture, with the kidnapping of the young wife and her departure for Gorée Island, on the coasts of Senegal, one of the main centers of the slave trade. The journey, on a pestilential slave ship, has the Caribbean as its final destination.
Raped by a sailor during the voyage, Bayangumay arrives in Guadeloupe around 1772. Her slave name is Babette.
Following this rape, she gives birth to Rosalie. The skin color of this child born of the rape is a barrier to maternal affection. Bayangumay will even beat the little girl who, nevertheless, will never stop coming to her, even though many times they almost ended up separated. On the eve of her “marronnage,” Bayangumay will however allow her maternal instinct to speak by caressing the girl before leaving.
After her mother’s departure, Rosalie becomes the “cocotte” of Xavière, the daughter of her master. Her beauty is noticed, and her light eyes of different colors leave no one indifferent. The more she grows, the more seductive she becomes.
At first, Rosalie proves very docile. But little by little, like her mother, she starts thinking about rebelling.
Then comes the revolution and the abolition of slavery decreed by the Convention of Victor Hugues in 1794. Rosalie’s master, chevalier Dangeau, flees, thus leaving her free. The young woman witnesses the executions on Victory Square in Pointe-à-Pitre and the fighting between Whites. She does not always understand what is happening around her, nor what is happening to her.
Suddenly and brutally, she realizes that she has been put back into slavery and wants to understand. People speak to her of a certain Richepanse who is said to have landed to carry out the orders of Bonaparte, who reinstated slavery in 1802.
One day, Rosalie witnesses the raid of a group of maroons on an estate. They are gathered around Moudongue Sanga, their leader. She, who understands her condition and that of her own people, is fascinated by this spirit of courage and rebellion.
All of this makes her think of her mother and helps her understand the reasons for her departure, and this is how she decides, she too, to join the maroons.
In the heights where the maroons gathered, Rosalie finally discovers freedom, happiness, and love. She meets Sanga, a figure who reveals to her the hope of an entire people. She discovers the joys of love with Maïmouni, a slave recently brought from Africa, with whom she rekindles this black identity that her mixed heritage threatened. She who no longer answers to the name Rosalie now calls herself Solitude, a name that suits her well and reflects her story. She becomes pregnant.
Despite her pregnancy, she takes part in all the fights led by the maroons and, in a sort of trance, throws herself furiously at Whites stunned by her courage, or her recklessness.
She finds herself among the fighters of Louis Delgrès, who face the troops of Richepanse. As her companions, defenders of the freedom of Black people, perish in an explosion, Solitude survives.
In November of the same year, Solitude gives birth to her child, who is immediately taken from her to be given to a slaveowner. She should have been executed six months earlier, but the colonists had thought that this animated womb could provide two more arms for a plantation. She will finally be arrested, sentenced to death, and executed on 19 November 1802.
La mulâtresse Solitude soon became a heroine of Guadeloupean history, where a statue is dedicated to her in Baimbridge, in Pointe-à-Pitre.
Although named “Solitude,” the young woman of admirable courage was not alone: she had been adopted by a new family, for that is what the maroons had become.
And then her vision, this dream of freedom that inhabited her obsessively, her loyalty to her mother and her lost Africa constantly occupied her thoughts. Solitude fought for the cause without ever losing courage.
