Of Suffocated Hearts and Tortured Souls: Seeking Subjecthood Through Madness in Francophone Women's Writing of Africa and the CaribbeanLexington Books, 2003 - 197 pages Female characters who suffer madness and insanity are strikingly prominent in novels by women writers of Africa and the Caribbean. To find out why there are so many "suffocated hearts and tortured souls" in this literature, Valerie Orlando, who has long studied Francophone text and culture, here closely reads the work of Aminata Sow Fall, Mariama B , Myrian Warner-Vieyra, and Simone Schwarz-Bart, among others. In these women's novels, Orlando finds, madness is the manifestation of a split identity, and in this study she sets herself the task of interrogating the nature of that identity. Francophone women novelists of Africa and the Caribbean--though they come from countries whose unique experiences of colonialism, revolution, and postcolonial regimes have shaped specific and discrete cultures--express a common search for a meaningful relationship between their experience as women to the history and destiny of their nations. Only when "woman"' is understood not as an ahistorical object but as a subject whose lived body is entwined with political, cultural, and economic structures, Orlando argues, will insanity finally give way to clarity of being. Interweaving literary citations with theoretical discussion, Suffocated Hearts and Tortured Souls is just as much a masterful explication of profoundly affecting literary work as it is an essential addition to feminist scholarship and theory. |
Contents
The Politics of Race and Patriarchy in Suzanne Lacascades ClaireSolange ame africaine | 37 |
Home Is Where I Eat My Bread Multiculturality and Becoming Multiple in Leila Houaris Zeida de nulle part | 51 |
Introduction to State II | 63 |
SelfLoathing SelfSacrifice Michele Lacrosils Cajou and Myriam WarnerVieyras Juletane | 73 |
Outinside the Confinement of Cultures Marie Chauvets Amour Colere et Folie and Mariama Bas Un Chant ecarlate | 97 |
Rooms and Prisons Sex and Sin Places of Sequestration in Nina Bouraouis La Voyeuse Interdite and Calixthe Beyalas Tu tappelleras Tanga | 125 |
Introduction to State III | 145 |
War Revolution and Family Matters Yamina Mechakras La Grotte eclatee and Hajer Djilanis Et Pourtant le ciel etait bleu | 147 |
Feminine Voices and Herstories Simone SchwarzBarts Pluie et Vent sur Telumee Miracle and Aminata Sow Falls Douceurs du bercail | 165 |
Transgressing Boundaries Reconstructing Stories | 181 |
Bibliography | 187 |
193 | |
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Common terms and phrases
Algerian women Aminata Sow Aminata Sow Fall Amour Anna-Claude Assia Djebar Asta Bâ's becomes Beyala body Bouraoui Cajou Calixthe Calixthe Beyala Chant écarlate Chauvet ciel était bleu Claire Claire-Solange Claire's Colère colonial Condé cultural defines diaspora Djilani's Douceurs du bercail exile Fanon feels Félix Guattari female feminine femme Fikria folie France Francophone Women Frantz Fanon French gender Gilles Deleuze Grotte éclatée Guadeloupian Haiti Haitian heroine heroine's Houari identity ideology insanity Juletane Juletane's Lacascade Lacascade's Lacrosil Leïla literary literature lives madness Maghreb male marginalization Mariama Mariama Bâ Marie Chauvet Maryse Condé masculine Mechakra mental Mireille mother Négritude Nina Bouraoui nomadic novel novelists Ousmane Paris Pluie et vent political postcolonial prison protagonist race racial Schwarz-Bart Senegal Senegalese sexual social society sociocultural Sow Fall space story Tanga Télumée traditional University Press violence voice Voyeuse Warner-Vieyra Werewere woman women authors Women Writers writing young Zeida