Rewriting the Return to Africa

Informationen zum Autor By Anne M. François Klappentext Rewriting the Return to Africa: Voices of Francophone Caribbean Women Writers examines how post-colonial women writers Maryse Condé, Simone Schwarz-Bart and Myriam Warner Vieyra emerged with a new vision of the notion of origins and identity and in the process revised the myth of the return to Africa previously constructed by Négritude writers in the 1930s. Their works reveal that the rediscovery of Caribbean history and culture leads to a new awareness of hybridity in identity and culture. Francois's engaging study of three Francophone Caribbean women writers--Guadeloupeans Maryse Conde, Simone Schwarz-Bart, and Myriam Warner-Vieyra--provides an interesting take on an old theme (taken up principally by male Caribbean writers): the allegorization of Africa as the nurturing mother. For these women, Africa assumes an opposite, though unfulfilling, patriarchal figure. In looking at two of the giants of Francophone Caribbean writing, Conde and Schwartz-Bart, and the less-known Warner-Vieyra, Francois (Eastern Univ.) differentiates the Antillean male/female sentiment of a mythical return to Africa. Reminiscent of Chantal Kalisa's Violence in Francophone African and Caribbean Women's Literature (CH, Jul'10, 47-6129), which took a feminist perspective in opposition to the patriarchal discourse of male writers in the Caribbean diaspora, the present title provides fresh feminist interpretations of the nostalgic yearnings for a welcoming Africa. In considering each author's search for Caribbean self-identity, Francois extends beyond the limitations imposed by the negritude and Creole of pre- and post-independence writing; she envisions writings by the women as a willful act of cultural identity rooted in the Caribbean rather than in a search of a mythical nurturing Africa. For these women, writing is a migratory journey that reconnects yearnings for identity to renewed Caribbean feminist understanding of self. Summing Up: Recommended. CHOICE Rewriting the Return to Africa: Voices of Francophone Caribbean Women Writers is a refreshing addition to the scholarship on French Caribbean literature. This book brings an exciting perspective to debates on differences between the productions of a "post-independence" generation of women writers and those of earlier male writers of the Negritude era in relation to their concept of an allegorical Africa. In an incisive analysis of selected novels by Maryse Conde, Simone Schwarz-Bart, and Myriam Warner-Vieyra, Dr. Francois argues persuasively that the subversion of the metaphorical figure of Africa by these women writers is tied to gender, as they challenge masculinist versions of the return to an idealized and mythologized mother/father figure. Dr. Francois presents the intriguing proposition that global nomadism may be the defining characteristic of post-Negritude writers and that, for women writers, the act of writing itself replaces the quest for Africa as a space to seek identity and happiness. This is a fascinating study that brings new insights to texts that have already become canonical and offers alternative interpretations of the preoccupation with identity which plays such a dominant role in the literary history of the French Caribbean. -- E. Anthony Hurley, Ph.D., Stony Brook University Rewriting the Return to Africa: Voices of Francophone Caribbean Women Writers meticulously demonstrates that the notion of return to Africa - be it metaphorical, physical or spiritual - has a long history in Caribbean literature and culture. The text explores the complexity of return as it relates to identity, language, gender and culture. Ultimately, this book challenges the myths of the return to origins and examines errancy among other possibilities as an alternative to Africa-the father/mother land. -- Cecile Accilien, Columbus State University Rewriting the Return to Africa makes a long over-due and compelling argument...

Auteur

Anne M. François is associate professor of French at Eastern University.

Texte du rabat

Rewriting the Return to Africa: Voices of Francophone Caribbean Women Writers examines how post-colonial women writers Maryse Condé, Simone Schwarz-Bart and Myriam Warner Vieyra emerged with a new vision of the notion of origins and identity and in the process revised the myth of the return to Africa previously constructed by Négritude writers in the 1930s. Their works reveal that the rediscovery of Caribbean history and culture leads to a new awareness of hybridity in identity and culture.

Contenu

Introduction Chapter 1: Return to Africa and the Caribbean Chapter 2: Toward a Creole Poetics Chapter 3: Rethinking the Return and Writing the Self Conclusion