Books in the After the Empire: The Francophone World and Postcolonial France series

Marginal Bodies and Precarious Lives in North Africa sheds light on marginal bodies and the (post)colonial State, revealing the deep interconnectedness of the past with the recent situation of North Africa. Insecurity is not the consequence of a society perceived as uncivilized, but rather the result of an indecent society.

As one of the most prominent voices from and about the French Caribbean, Gisele Pineau has garnered significant scholarly attention; however, this interest has culminated in precious few volumes devoted entirely to the author and her work. In response to this lack of in-depth critical attention, Reimagining Resistance in Gisele Pineau's Works brings together a range of perspectives from both sides of the Atlantic and across the Pacific to explore the unique ways in which Gisele Pineau's works redefine the concept of resistance, particularly as it relates to gender, race, history, and Antillean identity. As this volume ultimately demonstrates, resistance holds up a mirror to the political, economic, and cultural forces that have shaped the past, construct the present, and build the future. It argues that Pineau's characters open the narrative frame for reading them and move us beyond the categories of the wholly defiant or the inherently complicit. Above all, as they invite us to reimagine resistance, they expose our expectations and hopefully shift our understanding about what it means to rise and to fall in a world we seek to call our own.

This book examines literary and cinematic representations of the European settlers of Algeria known as the pieds-noirs following their mass migration to France in 1962. It breaks new ground by focusing on the family trope, including gender and youth, to reveal constructions of collective memory and identity post-Algerian independence.

The book is the first edited collection in English on Moroccan author Abdellah Taia and frames the distinctiveness of his migration by considering current scholarship in French and Francophone studies, post-colonial studies, affect theory, queer theory, and language and sexuality.

Ferment on the Fringes charts the trajectories of Francophone African narratives that reached the Anglo-American market, by analyzing the various institutional agents and agencies involved in the value-making process that accrues visibility to translated texts that eventually reach the Anglo-American book market.

This book uses a close reading of seven literary memoirs of the Nazi Occupation of France to show how the collective memory of the period has been shaped by political and social factors. It incorporates trauma theory, history, and folklore studies, examining a diverse group of writers and bringing to the fore the unique perspective of each.

The contributions of this volume explore the political, social, and cultural legacies of May '68 revolt in France and similar protest movements in other nations around the globe. These events share a global utopian imaginary which found expression in a variety of artistic productions.

In Shifting Perceptions of Migration in Senegalese Literature, Film, and Social Media, Mahriana Rofheart proposes a revised understanding of Senegalese migration narratives by asserting the importance of both local and global connections in recent novels, hip-hop songs, and documentary videos. Much previous research on migration narratives in French from Africa has suggested that contemporary authors often do not consider their countries of origin upon departure and instead focus on life abroad or favor a global perspective. Rofheart instead demonstrates that today's Senegalese novelists and hip-hop artists, whether living in France or Senegal, express connections to communities both in Senegal and abroad to cope with the traumatic experience of emigration and return. Ultimately, Rofheart asserts that Senegalese national identity remains significant to the way these authors and artists respond to migration.In her examination of novels in French, hip-hop songs in French and Wolof, and online documentaries, as well as the social and economic currents that influence the texts' production and circulation, Rofheart engages with scholarship on transnationalism, postcolonialism, popular culture, and new media studies. The study's initial chapters address well-known works from the mid-twentieth century, including Cheikh Hamidou Kane's Ambiguous Adventure, as well as the films of Ousmane Sembene, and Djibril Diop Mambety. This book then demonstrates how novelists such as Aminata Sow Fall and Fatou Diome, as well as hip-hop artists including Simon and Awadi, break with previous tragic depictions of migration in novels and films to present successful responses to the contemporary context of frequent emigration from Senegal.

Through literary and historical readings, this book explores how France was haunted by the violence of its colonial efforts in Algeria. Employing literary, philosophical, and archival analyses, it provides a new perspective on literary works from the French colonial period, while addressing questions of history, trauma, memory, and culture.

This book examines representations of the body in the works of four Oceanian women authors of French expression, considering postcolonial and feminist theoretical concepts in relation to Oceanian literary production.

Argues that four French writers - Michel Tournier, J.M.G. Le Clezio, Tahar Ben Jelloun and Leila Sebbar - practice "activist writing" which, when combined with the work of certain photographers, reframes a picture of Maghreb produced by two centuries of Orientalist misrepresentation.

Remnants of Empire in Algeria and Vietnam proposes a new approach to Francophone Studies through an examination of four specific Algerian and Vietnamese novels written in French by women. The connections between their works and shared colonial history lead us to a deeper understanding of postcolonial literature.

Breadfruit or Chestnut? examines gender construction comparatively across the fiction of contemporary writers of Guadeloupe and Martinique. In particular, it explores the construction of gender identity by six authors-three male and three female-who have never been brought together in a study of this issue.

Addresses the development since the 1950s of a type of Francophone African novel created by first-generation black African authors living in France. This work draws parallels with other literatures, and examines how these authors, are parting from mainstream African literature by exploring more personal avenues.

Presents a study of the autobiographical writings of three Francophone writers from the Maghreb Assia Djebar, Hlne Cixous, and Abdelkbir Khatibi. This book presents alluding to music as a means of comprehending the writers' improvisational writing styles.

Stephanie Corinna Bille is a Swiss short-story writer, playwright, poet, and novelist and winner of the 1975 French Prix Concourt. This work assembles and translates a collection of Bille's work that exposes an English-speaking audience to Bille's exotic, captivating, and sexually provocative stories.

A striking number of hysterical or insane female characters populate Francophone women's writing. To discover why, Orlando reads novels from a variety of cultures, teasing out key elements of Francophone identity struggles.

Miller synthesizes Karen Horney's model of submission, aggression and withdrawal, Jean Baker Miller's concept of relational being, Julia Kristeva's idea of psychic space, and Kelly Oliver's notions on social support to advance a penetrating analysis of the fiction of Paule Constant.

Presents a study of five writers from lands formerly or currently ruled by France (Algeria, Cambodia, Guiana, Madagascar, and Mali) and an interrogation of the relevance of postcolonial theory, criticism and studies to these writers. This work places the writers against the background of postcolonial studies.

Drawing links between the Francophone literatures of Canada, the French Caribbean, and North Africa, Spaces of Creation demonstrates that problematic issues of dynamic, postcolonial societies can and do fuel creative acts on the part of women. The trying experiences of displaced mothers and their daughters, including isolation, domestic violence, and single parenthood, often serve to inspire introspection and creative action. In effect, their painful, frustrating existence provides the opportunitythe space of creationnecessary to weave and transmit stories. Organized around different manifestations of culturally diverse or transcultural spaces depicted in postcolonial literaturerural villages, domestic spaces, city centers, and spaces of othernessthe monograph uncovers the complexities of mothering and ';daughtering' in contemporary Francophone contexts. Through discussion of these spaces, the book attests to a specifically ';feminine' transculturality. This vision of diversity acknowledges both the heartening and tragic aspects of life in dynamic, multicultural communities, revealing creative synergies between the literatures of different Francophone diasporas and inviting the reader to reconsider the mother-daughter relationship.

Women Writers of Gabon: Literature and Herstory demonstrates how the invisibility of women (historically, politically, cross-culturally, etc.) has led to the omission of Gabon's literature from the African canon, but it also discusses in depth the unique elements of Gabonese women's writing that show it is worthy of critical recognition and that prove why Gabonese women writers must be considered a major force in African literature. This book is the only book-length critical study of Gabonese literature that exists in English and although there are titles in French that provide analyses of the works of Gabonese women writers, no one work is comprehensive nor is the history of women's writing in Gabon considered in the such a manner. Throughout the various chapters, the book explores, among other things, contributions that are unique to Gabonese women writers such as: definitions of African feminisms as they pertain to Gabonese society, the rewriting of oral histories, rituals, and traditions of the Fang ethnic group, one of the first introductions of same-sex couples in African Francophone literature, discussions on the impact of witchcraft on development, and the appropriating of the epic poetry known as the mvet by women writers. The chapters explore works by all major voices in Gabonese women's writing including Angele Rawiri, Justine Mintsa, Sylvie Ntsame, Honorine Ngou, and Chantal Magalie Mbazoo-Kassa and the book concludes with brief introductions of a younger generation of Gabonese women writers such as Edna Merey-Apinda, Alice Endamne, Nadia Origo, Miryl Eteno, and Elisabeth Aworet among others.

In New France and early Canada, young men who ventured into the forest to hunt and trade with Amerindians (coureurs de bois, ';runners of the woods'), later traveling in big teams of canoes (voyageurs), were known for their independence. Often described as half-wild themselves, they linked the European and Indian societies, eventually helping to form a new culture with elements of both. From an ecocritical perspective they represent both negative and positive aspects of the human historical trajectory because, in addition to participating in the environmentally abusive fur trade, they also symbolize the way forward through intercultural connections and business relationships. The four novels analyzed hereJoseph-Charles Tache's Forestiers et voyageurs: Moeurs et legendes canadiennes (1863); Louis Hemon's Maria Chapdelaine (1916); Leo-Paul Desrosiers' Les Engages du Grand Portage (1938); and Antonine Maillet's Pelagie-la-Charrette (1979)portray the backwoodsmen operating in a collaborative mode within the realistic context of the need to make money. They entered folklore through the 19th century literary efforts of Tache and others to construct a distinct French Canadian national identity, then in an unstable and continually disrupted process of formation. Their entry into literature necessarily brought their Amerindian business and personal partners, thus making intercultural connections a foundation of the national identity that Tache and others strove to construct and also mirror. As figures in literature, they embody changing ideas of the self and of the cultures and ethnicities that they connect, both physically and in an abstract sense. Because constructions of self-identity result in behavior, studying this dynamic contributes to ecocritical efforts to better understand human behavior toward both ourselves and our environment. The woodsmen and their Amerindian partners occupy the intriguing position of contributing to both damage and greater acceptance of the cultural Other, the latter of which holds the promise of collaboration and joint searches for sustainable solutions. Thus coureurs de bois and voyageurs, far from perfect models, can continue to serve as guides today.

Intertextual Weaving in the Work of Linda L: Imagining the Ideal Reader uncovers the primary textual relationship that Linda L (1963 ), the most prolific Francophone author of the Vietnamese diaspora, fosters with a literary precursor of Austrian descent: the feminist writer-in-exile, Ingeborg Bachmann (19261973). This study offers an overdue exploration of the notably European roots of L's writerly formation. It traces an unexamined feminist import in her work to a sixteen-year inter- and intra-textual engagement with Bachmann and positions the latter as an imagined ideal reader of L's oeuvre. Intertextual analyses of Bachmann's post-war novel, Malina, with L's literary essays, early fiction, and trilogy, reveal that to overcome the challenges of writing in exile L adopts an alternative literary fore-bear of the European tradition.

The front covers of books written by Algerian women serve as the primary source of investigation in Front Cover Iconography and Algerian Women Writers. These covers have implications that extend beyond selling the book. What we see on one side of the pageor in this case, the cover, (recto) controls what we read on the reversein this case, the text itself (verso). Using theories of the paratext, including those of Gerard Genette and Jonathan Gray, this book determines how four dominant iconographies used on the covers of Algerian women's writing Orientalist art, the veil, the desert, and the author portrait work with and against the texts they represent. These images have an impact on the initial reception of the book, but beyond that, book covers determine how both the informed and uninformed reader categorize and interpret francophone Algerian women's writing in France and beyond. As the covers help to sell the works, they also produce messages, represented via their iconographies that embed themselves into the texts. A sometimes explicit, and at the very least, implicit dialog between the visual paratextual representation and the written textual one is created: a dialog that extends beyond the life of the physical book to a sort of canonical paradigm for reading these authors' works. Thus, even if the cover image appears ephemeral, it never truly disappears. Its powerful control over critical reception and, ultimately, interpretation of francophone Algerian women's writing remains.