Gender and Displacement: Home in Contemporary Francophone Women’s Autobiography

Home is a contested notion in contemporary literary and cultural studies, as critics assess the impact of empire, independence, migration and globalization upon colonial and postcolonial subjects. This volume assembles articles on the representation of home specifically in women’s autobiography, which is now one of the most exciting and productive fields of literary studies. The chapters analyze writing from diverse areas of the Francophone world, including North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and Indo-China, in addition to focussing on works by immigrant writers in France. The volume investigates the importance and the nuances of the construction of home in narratives of female identity in different contexts. This timely book includes original analyses by a range of scholars and studies both established writers, such as Maryse Conde, Marguerite Duras and Marie Cardinal, and newer voices such as Fatou Diome, Faiza Guene and Helene Grimaud. Gender and Displacement: The Representation of Home in Francophone Women’s Autobiography thus brings new understandings to the connections between race, gender, colonization and migration in female identity in diverse spaces.