Curaçao author Frank Martinus Arion (1936-2015) receives a posthumous writer’s stone in De Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam on Dia di Pais Kòrsou, Curaçao’s national day.
Arion is best known for novels such as Dubbelspel, but biographer Mineke de Vries says he also waged a long fight for black consciousness and for the Netherlands to face its colonial past.
De Vries spent more than seven years on her biography, Uit baldadigheid ben ik gesneden.
Dutch or Papiamentu
He campaigned hard for Papiamentu but wrote his novels in Dutch, which some held against him.
De Vries calls that unfair, because Dutch was forced on him as a child and became the language of his emotions.
Arrival in the Netherlands
After his mother and younger brother died early, his father placed him with several relatives, and the guilt stayed with him for life.
He came to the Netherlands to study expecting a promised land, but he met discrimination and fell into a deep identity crisis.
De Vries says the words used in the Dutch apology for slavery were the ones Arion was already using in the 1950s.
Check out our guide to the best bookshops in Amsterdam to find a copy of Dubbelspel or the biography.