[3] Lucette Céranus was one of twins born on 17 February 1916 to a single mother in Le Carbet in Martinique, then a French colony.

[5] Her father, Eugène Combette had left Martinique before the birth of the twins to join the French Navy and later married one of his aunt's god-daughters in 1917.

[6] A few years later, the sisters rejoined their mother in Fort-de-France until her death in late 1928 or early 1929, after which the twins returned to Le Carbet.

At the age of thirteen or fourteen, they were invited to be integrated in their father's family on the condition that they take care of their half-siblings and give up education, which Céranus refused, and the two returned to Fort-de-France, where they worked at a factory.

They had a son together and their relationship lasted two years, until André had to return to France at the end of Admiral Robert's administration in the Antilles.

Despite having a weak command of written language at the time, she published her first novel, I Am a Martinican Woman in 1948, which won the Prix des Antilles in 1949.

Both books feature fair-skinned, mixed-race Martinican women as protagonists and handle themes of racial identity, interracial relationships and alienation.

The second part is set during World War II, with Admiral Robert in control of Martinique, and focuses on the story of the relationship between Mayotte and André, a white French officer.

The second part of the novel is largely adapted from the memoir written by André, the French naval officer, with some passages almost totally reproduced.

[2] However, Fanon's critique has been criticized as being sexist and commodifying women by treating them as instrumental in the dynamic between black and white men, and as mere objects of desire.

[2][8] Fanon also overlooks the question of authorship and the extent to which the work is autobiographical, treating it as a true account of a real Mayotte Capécia.