Writings From the Borderzone: Tales of Recuperation and Transgression in the Works of Malika Mokeddem, Calixthe Beyala, and Evelyne Accad
Heistad, Deirdre Bucher
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/86300
Description
Title
Writings From the Borderzone: Tales of Recuperation and Transgression in the Works of Malika Mokeddem, Calixthe Beyala, and Evelyne Accad
Author(s)
Heistad, Deirdre Bucher
Issue Date
2000
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Accad, Evelyne
Department of Study
French
Discipline
French
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Literature, African
Language
eng
Abstract
This study is devoted to three Francophone women writers living abroad whose novels reflect the interconnectedness of the world today in that their writing is both multicultural and transnational. In spite of their various origins these Francophone women novelists, Malika Mokeddem from Algeria, Calixthe Beyala from Cameroun, and Evelyne Accad from Lebanon, write from a discursive space often characterized by a transnational sense of the female subject as she moves across borders. While fighting to survive the alienation, solitude, and marginalization one often faces while living abroad these women choose to write of their experiences at home as well as in exile. By examining gender related issues like polygamy, excision, religion, forced marriage and even domestic violence, these writers confront socio-political questions extending well beyond the colonizer/colonized dichotomy that focus on the role of women in society before, during and especially after independence. These writers' socio-political and discursive locations within the cultural borderzone allows each of them to give new dimension to issues related to women. Each author's choice to affirm her own in betweeness can thus be read as a, socio-political act aimed at creating new visions of female strength, freedom and solidarity. Only from within the cultural borderzone can Malika Mokeddem, Calixthe Beyala, and Evelyne Accad find the freedom necessary to write such innovative tales of recuperation and transgression.
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