In her successful podcasts like “Me My Sexe and I” and “La Fille sur le canapé”, Axelle Jah Njiké explores the intimacy of black women. A reflection nourished by her own traumas, which she continues today in her book “Diary of a (black) feminist”.
For a long time, she took it as a compliment to be called “the little white girl in the family”. Born in Cameroon, Axelle Jah Njiké was sent to France by her mother at the age of 7. "I was there to do a good education, become a lawyer, find a husband and be a good mother," she wrote in her Diary of a (black) feminist, published by Au diable vauvert. Rather than striving to fit into a predefined box, the soon to be fifty-something has become, through tenacity and hard work, a “pagan feminist author and activist” – in her words. A recognized podcaster too (Me My Sex and I in 2018, The Girl on the Sofa in 2020). This has been the result of an often hard and moving journey, which she traces with sensitivity in her book, while affirming her great freedom.
What seems to come first for her is the love of literature, which drives her forward. “As a child, I dreamed of being Danielle Steel or Judith Krantz [two authors of successful sentimental novels], she says very seriously on the terrace of a café. I wanted to write to become famous and bring my mother to France. In primary school, she was so bored that the clever mistress gave her the key to the class library. "Sophie in the novels of the Comtesse de Ségur pissed me off, I didn't feel I had the right to do stupid things like her, so I rewrote her stories in my own way in notebooks. »
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