The Pull of Postcolonial Nationhood: Gender and Migration in Francophone African Literatures
While 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 understandings of nationalism, namely a failure to consider that women have traditionally been the sites for discourses and practices of nationalism. Amid the negative currency of home and nation in contemporary cultural criticism, including postcolonial criticism, this book contends that home remains a politically, ideologically, and emotionally loaded matter for postcolonial subjects.
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The Pull of Postcolonial Nationhood: Gender and Migration in Francophone African Literatures
While 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 understandings of nationalism, namely a failure to consider that women have traditionally been the sites for discourses and practices of nationalism. Amid the negative currency of home and nation in contemporary cultural criticism, including postcolonial criticism, this book contends that home remains a politically, ideologically, and emotionally loaded matter for postcolonial subjects.
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The Pull of Postcolonial Nationhood: Gender and Migration in Francophone African Literatures

The Pull of Postcolonial Nationhood: Gender and Migration in Francophone African Literatures

by Ayo A. Coly Dartmouth College
The Pull of Postcolonial Nationhood: Gender and Migration in Francophone African Literatures

The Pull of Postcolonial Nationhood: Gender and Migration in Francophone African Literatures

by Ayo A. Coly Dartmouth College

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Overview

While 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 understandings of nationalism, namely a failure to consider that women have traditionally been the sites for discourses and practices of nationalism. Amid the negative currency of home and nation in contemporary cultural criticism, including postcolonial criticism, this book contends that home remains a politically, ideologically, and emotionally loaded matter for postcolonial subjects.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780739145111
Publisher: Lexington Books
Publication date: 06/23/2010
Pages: 176
Product dimensions: 6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Ayo A. Coly is assistant professor of comparative literature and African studies at Dartmouth College.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: Of Uprooted and Deterritorialized Africans xi

Part I Ken Bugul: From Self-Imposed Exile to Constrained Homecoming

1 The (Non-) Place of the Daughter of the Postcolonial House: Le baobab fou and Cendres et braises 3

2 No Place Like the Non-Place: Striving to Come Home in Cendres et braises and Riwan ou le chemin de sable 21

Part II Calixthe Beyala: The Conflicted Immigrant Standpoint

3 Aborted Postnationalism?: C'est le soleil qui m'a brûlée and Tu t'appelleras Tanga 41

4 (Un)Writing France as Home: The Belleville Novels 67

5 From African Guest to Afro-French Hostess: Producing an Acceptable Immigrant Geography of Home in Amours sauvages 83

Part III Fatou Diome: The Anti-Immigrant Standpoint

6 Globalization and the Revival of the Anticolonial and Nationalist Narrative of Home: La préférence nationale and Le ventre de l'Atlantique 99

7 Bounded Homelessness as a Strategy: La préférence nationale and Le ventre de l'Atlantique 111

Conclusion: Reinstating the Nation as an Object of Postcolonially Correct Interest 125

Bibliography 133

Index 143

About the Author 147

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