Intersecting authority-language-and-symbolic power, this article tells the story of a group of continental Francophone African youth who find themselves in an urban French-language high school in southwestern Ontario, Canada. Through their narrative, one is confronted by the trauma of one's own language being declared an illegitimate child, hence becoming a "deceptive fluency" in the "eyes of power" thanks to race and post-coloniality. They are fully consciousness of this situation and their "linguistic return", thus gazing back at the eyes of power and declaring themselves "subjects" capable of love and desire. I briefly address questions of hospitality and language ownership and conclude by addressing the need to re-think the connection between race, power and language.