The Pull of Postcolonial Nationhood: Gender and Migration in Francophone African Literatures Book

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: Of Uprooted and Deterritorialized Africans xi

Part I Ken Bugul: From Self-Imposed Exile to Constrained Homecoming

1 The (Non-) Place of the Daughter of the Postcolonial House: Le baobab fou and Cendres et braises 3

2 No Place Like the Non-Place: Striving to Come Home in Cendres et braises and Riwan ou le chemin de sable 21

Part II Calixthe Beyala: The Conflicted Immigrant Standpoint

3 Aborted Postnationalism?: C'est le soleil qui m'a brûlée and Tu t'appelleras Tanga 41

4 (Un)Writing France as Home: The Belleville Novels 67

5 From African Guest to Afro-French Hostess: Producing an Acceptable Immigrant Geography of Home in Amours sauvages 83

Part III Fatou Diome: The Anti-Immigrant Standpoint

6 Globalization and the Revival of the Anticolonial and Nationalist Narrative of Home: La préférence nationale and Le ventre de l'Atlantique 99

7 Bounded Homelessness as a Strategy: La préférence nationale and Le ventre de l'Atlantique 111

Conclusion: Reinstating the Nation as an Object of Postcolonially Correct Interest 125

Bibliography 133

Index 143

About the Author 147