Ten years ago, Mélina Seymour published her first book: Jeunes d'Outre-mer, cas de la Guadeloupe.

A book born a few weeks after the 2015 regional elections, in which she led a list. It was neither a campaign book nor a political showcase, but a clear-eyed and well-researched look at Guadeloupean youth, whom she had observed for years through her reporting, her community involvement, and her life as a mother. In it, she formulated twenty proposals, driven by a simple conviction: these young people deserved better than the silence of the institutions.

Ten years have passed.

Mélina Seymour now lives in Canada. In the past decade, there has been Quebec, West Africa, periods of mourning, rebuilding, published books, encounters, human experiences, the creation of international organizations, a woodcarving workshop in Benin, and then a French-language publishing house founded in Ontario, to name just a few. Life has gone on, as it always does, without asking permission. But this book has never left her.

Today, she revisits her twenty proposals from 2016. She assesses what has changed, what has remained a dead letter, and what has worsened. In 2025, Guadeloupe recorded 47 homicides. Almost one per week. Mostly young people. The exodus of the country's most dynamic citizens continues. Single mothers still bear alone the burden that the system refuses to bear.

"Young people of Guadeloupe, ten years later" is not an accusation. It is an honest assessment. An attempt to look at reality without distortion. And a question posed simply, from the distance that sometimes sharpens our perspective: what did we miss?

Through this work, Mélina Seymour formulates twenty new proposals. Not to claim to save a territory on her own, but because after ten more years of observation, fieldwork, exile, motherhood, loss and reconstruction, certain emergencies can no longer be avoided.