In 2008, Pap Ndiaye published “La Condition Noire” (“The Black Condition”), an essay on Black history and discrimination in France. NDiaye wrote a foreword for the book in the form of a short story about two sisters of different races. “I liked the idea that at school people didn’t ask you to define yourself by this,” she said of her youth. Until a work trip last year, NDiaye had been to Senegal, her father’s home country, only once, when she was 19. “I was doing what I thought I was made for, what I loved, but I didn’t really consider the future.”

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Persons: Pap Ndiaye, NDiaye, Victoire, “, ” NDiaye, Paula, didn’t, ”, Joyce Carol Oates, Les, hadn’t Locations: France, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Minuit