Genet's mother was a young prostitute who raised him for the first year of his life before putting him up for
adoption. Thereafter Genet was raised in the provinces by a carpenter and his family, who according to
Edmund White's biography, were loving and attentive. While he received excellent grades in school, his childhood involved a series of attempts at running away and incidents of petty
theft (although White also suggests that Genet's later claims of a dismal, impoverished childhood were exaggerated to fit his outlaw image).
After the death of his foster mother, Genet was placed with an elderly couple but remained with them less than two years. According to the wife, "he was going out nights and also seemed to be wearing makeup." On one occasion he squandered a considerable sum of money, which they had entrusted him for delivery elsewhere, on a visit to a local fair. For this and other misdemeanors, including repeated acts of vagrancy, he was sent at the age of 15 to
Mettray Penal Colony where he was detained between 2 September 1926 and 1 March 1929. In
The Miracle of the Rose (
1946), he gives an account of this period of detention, which ended at the age of 18 when he joined the
Foreign Legion. He was eventually given a dishonorable discharge on grounds of indecency (having been caught engaged in a
homosexual act) and spent a period as a vagabond, petty thief and
prostitute across
Europe— experiences he recounts in
The Thief's Journal (
1949). After returning to
Paris, France in
1937, Genet was in and out of prison through a series of arrests for theft, use of false papers,
vagabondage, lewd acts and other offenses. In prison, Genet wrote his first poem, "Le condamné à mort," which he had printed at his own cost, and the novel
Our Lady of the Flowers (
1944). In Paris, Genet sought out and introduced himself to
Jean Cocteau, who was impressed by his writing. Cocteau used his contacts to get Genet's novel published, and in
1949, when Genet was threatened with a
life sentence after ten convictions, Cocteau and other prominent figures including
Jean-Paul Sartre and
Pablo Picasso successfully petitioned the French President to have the sentence set aside. Genet would never again return to prison.
By
1949 Genet had completed five novels, three plays and numerous poems. His explicit and often deliberately provocative portrayal of
homosexuality and criminality was such that by the early 1950s his work was banned in the
United States. Sartre wrote a long analysis of Genet's
existential development (from vagrant to writer) entitled
Saint Genet comédien et martyr (
1952) which was anonymously published as the first volume of Genet's complete works. Genet was strongly affected by Sartre's analysis and did not write for the next five years. Between
1955 and
1961 Genet wrote three more plays as well as an essay called "What Remains of a
Rembrandt Torn Into Four Equal Pieces and Flushed Down the Toilet", on which hinged
Jacques Derrida's analysis of Genet in his seminal work "Glas". During this time he became emotionally attached to Abdallah, a tightrope walker. However, following a number of accidents and Abdallah's
suicide in
1964, Genet entered a period of
depression, even attempting suicide himself.
From the late
1960s, starting with a homage to
Daniel Cohn-Bendit after the events of May
1968, Genet became politically active. He participated in demonstrations drawing attention to the living conditions of
immigrants in France. In
1970 the
Black Panthers invited him to the USA where he stayed for three months giving lectures, attending the trial of their leader,
Huey Newton, and publishing articles in their journals. Later the same year he spent six months in
Palestinian refugee camps, secretly meeting
Yasser Arafat near Amman. Profoundly moved by his experiences in
Jordan and the USA, Genet wrote a final lengthy memoir about his experiences,
A Prisoner of Love, which would be published posthumously. Genet also supported
Angela Davis and
George Jackson, as well as
Michel Foucault and
Daniel Defert's Prison Information Group. He worked with Foucault and Sartre to protest
police brutality against Algerians in Paris, a problem persisting since the
Algerian War of Independence, when beaten bodies were to be found floating in the
Seine. In September
1982 Genet was in
Beirut when the massacres took place in the Palestinian camps of
Sabra and Shatila. In response, Genet published "Quatre heures à Chatila" (Four Hours in Shatila), an account of his visit to Shatila after the event. In one of his rare public appearances during the later period of his life, at the invitation of Austrian philosopher
Hans Köchler he read from his work during the inauguration of an exhibition on the massacre of Sabra and Shatila organized by the
International Progress Organization in
Vienna, Austria, on 19 December 1983. (
Genet in Vienna)
Genet developed throat
cancer and was found dead on April 15,
1986 in a hotel room in Paris. Genet may have fallen on the floor and fatally hit his head. He is buried in the
Spanish Cemetery in
Larache, Morocco.
