About

Krystal Black is a writer of Negritude and Nostalgic Poetry, from a francophone ex-British colony off the south-east coast of Madagascar. She spent the first nineteen years of her life on that multiethnic island-country often heralded for its racial harmony. She then migrated to Germany, where she worked in telecommunications before meeting and following her husband to the US. There, she pursued a degree in Education. As a graduate student, she taught college French on teaching assistantships before embarking on a twenty-six-year career as a public school teacher. The story of Ciska, a young woman suffering from schizophrenia, is not unique but had to be told nonetheless. And who could tell it better than someone whose life experiences closely parallel those of the main character without leading to the same fate. Indeed, as a younger sister, the author of The Color of Madness has firsthand knowledge of the tragic life story of her sibling. Krystal Black loses no time in pointing the finger at the real culprit in Ciska’s story—racism. Not sexism, not classism, not ageism, not cultism. Indeed, most, if not all, of Ciska’s life experiences that humiliate, negate and repudiate involve her racial identity from early childhood to young adulthood with special emphasis on adolescence.