Autofiction and Advocacy in the Francophone Caribbean
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A01=RenA(C)e Larrier
A01=Renée Larrier
Author_RenA(C)e Larrier
Author_Renée Larrier
Caribbean people
Category=DSB
characters
colonialism
danmye
Edwidge Danticat
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Francophone Caribbean writers
Gisele Pineau
identities
Joseph Zobel
languages
layering of voices
legacy of slavery
Martinican combat dance
Maryse Conde
narrators
patriarchy
Patrick Chamoiseau
protagonists
readers
subjectivity
time
trope
Product details
- ISBN 9780813068237
- Weight: 288g
- Dimensions: 151 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 28 Apr 2020
- Publisher: University Press of Florida
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Larrier breaks new ground in analyzing first-person narratives by five Francophone Caribbean writers--Joseph Zobel, Patrick Chamoiseau, Gisele Pineau, Edwidge Danticat, and Maryse Conde--that manifest distinctive interaction among narrators, protagonists, characters, and readers through a layering of voices, languages, time, sources, and identities. Employing the Martinican combat dance--danmye--as a trope, the author argues that these narratives can be read as testimony to the legacy of slavery, colonialism, and patriarchy that denied Caribbean people their subjectivity.
In chapters devoted to Zobel, Chamoiseau, Pineau, Danticat, and Conde--who come from Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Haiti--Larrier probes the presence, construction, and strategy of the first-person narrator, which sometimes shifts within the text itself. Providing a perspective different from European travel literature, these texts deliberately position the "I" as a witness and/or performer who articulates experiences ignored or misinterpreted by sojourners' more widely circulated chronicles. While not purporting to speak for others, the "I" is concerned with transmitting what he or she saw, heard, experienced, or endured, therefore disrupting conventional representations of the Francophone Caribbean. Moreover, in modeling authenticity and agency, autofiction is also a form of advocacy.
In chapters devoted to Zobel, Chamoiseau, Pineau, Danticat, and Conde--who come from Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Haiti--Larrier probes the presence, construction, and strategy of the first-person narrator, which sometimes shifts within the text itself. Providing a perspective different from European travel literature, these texts deliberately position the "I" as a witness and/or performer who articulates experiences ignored or misinterpreted by sojourners' more widely circulated chronicles. While not purporting to speak for others, the "I" is concerned with transmitting what he or she saw, heard, experienced, or endured, therefore disrupting conventional representations of the Francophone Caribbean. Moreover, in modeling authenticity and agency, autofiction is also a form of advocacy.
Renee Larrier is associate professor of French at Rutgers University.
