The Rage Letters

Written by Valérie Bah, translated by Kama La Mackerel
Fall 2023

An exhausted security guard dreams of home. A sculptor and a pothead have great sex — in the shadow of wax ex-lovers. A diversity workshop devolves into a familiar nightmare.

Throughout this deadpan collection, determined, damned, and triumphant characters appear and reappear, and their links become clear over the course of the fragmented narrative. The author playfully traces the portrait of the intertwined lives of a group of Black queer and trans friends as they navigate the social violence, traumas, and contradictions of their circumstances.

Originally published in French in 2021 by les Éditions du remue-ménage, as part of the Martiales collection, the stories in Bah’s The Rage Letters — set in Montreal and beyond — are sometimes brief, often conversational, and always generative of possibilities through the characters’ desire, rage, and acts of rebellion.

Valérie Bah is a Tiohtià:ke-based filmmaker and writer whose work explores intergenerational trauma & healing, as well as mundane/radical acts of survival. Couched in magical realism, Val’s narratives are driven by Black feminist thought and lived experience.

Kama La Mackerel is an educator, visual artist, performer, writer and translator who works between and across English, French and Mauritian Kreol. They are the author of the award-winning poetry collection ZOM-FAM (Metonymy Press) and have translated works by Canadian writers Vivek Shraya and Kai Cheng Thom. They have lectured, performed and exhibited their work internationally. Find them on social media @kamalamackerel