Description
Book SynopsisThis volume of essays explores what it is that has brought marginalized and often exiled writers, seen as treacherous, alienated, and/or queer by their societies and nations together by way of Paris. Spanning from the inter-war period of the late 1920s to the present millennium, this volume considers many seminal questions that have influenced and continue to shape the realm of exiled writers who have sought refuge in Paris in order to write. Additionally, the volume's essays seek to define alienation and marginalization as not solely subscribing to any single denominator -- sexual preference, gender, or nationality-- but rather as shared modes of being that allow authors to explore what it is to write from abroad in a place that is foreign yet freed of the constrictions of one's home space. What makes Paris a particularly fruitful space that has allowed these authors and their writings to cross national, ethnic, racial, religious, and linguistic boundaries for over a century? What is
Trade ReviewParis and the Marginalized Author provides an original and welcome lens through which the shadowy sides of the City of Lights come to life from the thirties to the present. The juxtaposition of multiple perspectives on authors from different origins (from African-American to Algerian), some of them little known, offers to the reader a unique Paris, haunted by the ghosts of its colonial history. The complex cartography that emerges as a multilayered palimpsest connects race, class, gender, and sexuality and creates an alternative map of the French capital bound to change the way we study Paris. -- Joëlle Vitiello, Macalester College
Pears and Orlando’s edited volume Paris and the Marginalized Author: Treachery, Alienation , Queerness and Exile is a great example of the embodiment of intersectionality, inviting readers to rethink notions of identities based on nationality, home and language. The paradox of Paris is that it is simultaneously mystified and vilified because it is a space that on the one hand welcomes some writers and dictators of different race, creed, and sexual belonging, while on the other hand marginalizes and alienates other writers and asylum seekers. The writers of this volume represent France’s ongoing struggle with its own double consciousness, métissage, history of oppression, violence and slavery. -- Cécile Accilien, Kansas University
Moving beyond paradigms of melancholia and debilitating loss, this perceptive volume rethinks exile as a site of productive estrangement enmeshed in transnational political struggles. A vibrant reflection on the marginalized subjects’ aspiration to find their place in the world. -- Edwige Tamalet Talbayev, Tulane University
This outstanding co-edited volume comprises a stunning set of excellent, thought-provoking and original essays. The analyses examine the ways in which exiled writers of various origins addressed marginalization and related themes while living in Paris. The contributors aptly demonstrate that due to the diverse linguistic, national, ethnic, religious and sexual identities of the examined authors, their creative productions have participated in major ongoing local and global debates about race, gender, literature, sexuality, politics, postcolonialism and bilingualism. -- Hakim Abderrezak, University of Minnesota
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Paris and the Marginalized Author: Treachery, Alienation, Queerness and Exile Valérie K. Orlando and Pamela A. Pears Part I: 1919–1950s : From the Parisian Harlem Renaissance to the Beginning of “The 30 Glorieuses” Chapter 1: Gwendolyn Bennett and Her Paris Idyll T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting Chapter 2: From Alienation to Activism: Richard Wright, Jean Genet, and the Black Panthers Pamela A. Pears Part II: 1960s-1970s: The Algerian War, Identity Politics and Postcolonial Immigration Chapter 3: A Mexican in Paris from the 1940s to Algerian Independence: Elena Garro’s Testimonios sobre Mariana, Reencuentro de personajes, Mi hermanita Magdalena Sandra Messinger Cypess Chapter 4: No Name in the Street for Passengers in the West: Nabile Farès, James Baldwin, and Conversations of Alienation Valérie K. Orlando Chapter 5: No More Eden: The Place of Diasporic Encounters in Paris Noir Fiction Laila Amine Part III: 1980s-1990s: Intersectional feminism, Capitalist Globalization and la francophonie, writ large? Chapter 6: De rive en rive: Exile, Space, and Memory in Nancy Huston’s L’empreinte de l’ange Aparna Nayak Chapter 7: Packing an Epistolary Punch: Nancy Huston and Leïla Sebbar’s Parisian Proximities in Lettres parisiennes: Autopsie de l’exil Alison Rice Chapter 8 : Sur les pas de Linda Lê: Paris, Exilic Heterotopia Leslie Barnes Part IV: 2000s: The New Millennium: Transnationalism, Conversations beyond France Chapter 9: The Right to Paris: Migrants’ Narratives in Shay Youngblood’s Black Girl in Paris and Évelyne Trouillot’s La Mémoire aux abois Norrell Edwards Chapter 10: The Place of Paris in Vietnamese Diasporic Fiction Karl Ashoka Britto Chapter 11 : “ Je suis terroriste, pédé et le fils de Marilyn Monroe”: Cinematic Stars, Strife, and Queer Filiation in Abdellah Taïa’s Infidèles (2012) Denis M. Provencher Chapter 12: Louis-Philippe Dalembert and the Haitian Intellectual Tradition in Paris Félix Germain Chapter 13: Bernardo Toro: Beyond Lieux Communs Laura Reeck Bibliography About the Contributors
