In 1931, the last International Colonial Exposition of the world was opened in Paris. It was one of a series of colonial expositions that were held in France in the 1920s and 1930s, as France sought to reassert its colonial presence in the wake of World War I.
The shrill echoes of Toni Morrison's "Whose house is this?" can be clearly heard, the moment she realizes that her entire universe has abruptly turned its face to the opposite wall, which is now her own house of fiction, her own house of memories, her own house of light and shadow has become the house of darkness, the house of dumbness and the house of suffocation.