Her work "Tropic of violence" is based on children on the streets of Mayotte. The struggle of the Department of Migratory authorities and the delinquency of youth has been pictured in the novel. In her own words, Appanah narrates that "I lived in Mayotte from 2008 to 2010 and had been struck by the number of children in the streets. They were not abandoned, they were not the round they were playing happily on every street corner , some were even occasionally at school and in the evening, they found a roof."