Description
Book SynopsisWhile the male-dominated Francophone African migrant literary tradition includes women writers, there is no study that attends to this subgroup of writers. The Pull of Postcolonial Nationhood: Gender and Migration in Francophone African Literatures pioneers the study of these writers as a category through an examination of three major women who exemplify the Francophone African female migrant literary tradition: Ken Bugul, Calixthe Beyala, and Fatou Diome. By studying these women together, Ayo A. Coly innovatively introduces gender into prevailing theories of Francophone African migrant literatures. These theories, in line with the current surge of postnationalism in cultural criticism, claim that questions of home and nationhood are obsolete for the present generation of Francophone African migrant writers, but this book shows that the opposite is true in the texts of these writers. Coly is thus able to demonstrate how claims of postnationalism are often skewed by gender-blind underst
Trade ReviewThe book breaks new ground by reconstructing previous readings of nationalism that ignore the gender paradigm, and by correlating this oversight to their celebration of postnationalism. . . .Her subsequent analysis of postindependent hone and belonging as elusive, exclusivist, inviting, and to heteropatriarchal for migrant African women is refreshing. * French Review *
Studies of African literature on migration have gone astray by failing to take account of gender in the diverging relationship between the individual and home. Ayo Coly brings contemporary theory back to the individual and her nation with sophisticated analyses of works by Bugul, Beyala, and Diome. -- Thomas A. Hale, Pennsylvania State University
Home Matters takes up what Ayo Coly views as the problematic pattern of 'celebratory insistence on disjunctures' in contemporary theorizing through which we read and consider identities, texts, and culture arising in Africa, as in other postcolonial worlds. The other side of that coin is the denigration of home, which, for postcolonial theory, is associated with stasis, comfort, lack of desire and questioning, and an absence of engagement with others across boundaries. Highlighting the way in which gender informs Francophone African exile and immigrant literary traditions, this rich and compelling study on ongoing attachment to home in the era of global nomadism is an important-indeed, critical—challenge to the migritude paradigm... -- Eileen Julien, Indiana University
Home Matters takes up what Ayo Coly views as the problematic pattern of 'celebratory insistence on disjunctures' in contemporary theorizing through which we read and consider identities, texts, and culture arising in Africa, as in other postcolonial worlds. The other side of that coin is the denigration of home, which, for postcolonial theory, is associated with stasis, comfort, lack of desire and questioning, and an absence of engagement with others across boundaries. Highlighting the way in which gender informs Francophone African exile and immigrant literary traditions, this rich and compelling study on ongoing attachment to home in the era of global nomadism is an important-indeed, critical—challenge to the migritude paradigm. -- Eileen Julien, Indiana University
The volume is well-researched and shows a broad and deep familiarity with existing critical work on the texts at hand. Coly perhaps nods to fellow theorists more than necessary in a work that makes so many significant contributions of its own. However, this may be a strength for its use in teaching; as it provides a fine overview of the field. * Research in African Literatures *
Table of ContentsChapter 1 Introduction: Of Uprooted and Deterritorialized Africans Part 2 Part I. Ken Bugul: From Self-Imposed Exile to Constrained Homecoming Chapter 3 Chapter 1: The (non)Place of the Daughter of the Postcolonial House: Le Baobab fou and Cendres et braises Chapter 4 Chapter 2: No Place Like the (non)Place: Striving to Come Home in Cendres et braises and Riwan ou le chemin de sable Part 5 Part II. Calixthe Beyala: The Conflicted Immigrant Standpoint Chapter 6 Chapter 3: Aborted Postnationalism? C'est le soleil qui m'a brûlée and Tu t'appelleras Tanga Chapter 7 Chapter 4: (Un)Writing France as Home: The Belleville Novels Chapter 8 Chapter 5: From African Guest to Afro-French Hostess: Producing an Acceptable Immigrant Geography of Home in Amours Sauvages Part 9 Part III. Fatou Diome: The Anti-Immigrant Standpoint Chapter 10 Chapter 6: Globalization and the Revival of the Anticolonial and Nationalist narrative of Home: La préférence nationale and Le ventre de l'Atlantique Chapter 11 Chapter 7: Bounded Homelessness as a Strategy: La préférence nationale and Le ventre de l'Atlantique Chapter 12 Conclusion: Reinstating the Nation as an object of Postcolonially Correct Interest
