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The essays in this volume provide an overview and critical account of prevalent trends and theoretical arguments informing current investigations into literary treatments of motherhood and aging. They explore how two key stages in women's lives-maternity and old age-are narrated and defined in fictions and autobiographical writings by contemporary French and francophone women. Through close readings of Maryse Condé, Hélène Cixous, Zahia Rahmani, Linda Lê, Pierrette Fleutieux, and Michèle Sarde, among others, these essays examine related topics such as dispossession, female friendship, and women's relationships with their mothers. By adopting a broad, synthetic approach to these two distinct and defining stages in women's lives, this volume elucidates how these significant transitional moments set the stage for women's evolving definitions (and interrogations) of their identities and roles.
List of contents
Preface: Where the Lines Cross; KAREN MCPHERSON and FLORENCE RAMOND JURNEY.-Part I. Women Defining Choices.- 1. Childless Mothers: Personal Perspectives from Francophone Women Writers; ALISON RICE.-2. "If you don't have children, you must be...": Linda Lê's À l'enfant que je n'aurai pas and Voluntary Non-motherhood;JULIE RODGERS.-3. Linda Lê's Antigonal Refusal of Motherhood; GILLIAN NI CHEALLAIGH.-PART II. Articulating Self in Relationship to Other(s) 4. Aban-donner: The Maternal in Le jour où je n'étais pas là; LAURIE CORBIN.-5.Re-writing Maturity: Coming-of-Age through and into Female Community in Maryse Condé's Moi, Tituba and Nicole Brossard's Le désert mauve; JENNY ODINTZ.-6.The Accidental Author: Motherhood, Woundability, and Writing in Maaryse Condé's La vie sans fards; NICOLE SIMEK.-7.Free At Last: Coming to Terms with the Mother in the Woman in La Noce d'Anna by Nathacha Appanah; FLORENCE RAMOND JURNEY.-Part III. Defining the Aging Self.-8. La dernière adresse: Possessions, Dispossession, and the Preservation of Memory; JEAN ANDERSON.-9.Redefining the Self: Explorations of Aging in Michèle Sarde's Constance et la cinquantaine and Nancy Huston's Dolce Agonia; SUSAN IRELAND and PATRICE PROULX.-10. A Daughter No More: (National) Identity and the Adult Orphan in Loin de mon père by Véronique Tadjo; AMY BARAM REID.- Writing the Mother Immortal: Cixous and Dupré; Karen McPherson.- Bibliography.- Notes on the Contributors.- Index.
About the author
Florence Ramond Jurney is Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Gettysburg College, USA. She has published two critical monographs: Voix/es libres: Maternité et identité féminine dans la littérature antillaise (2006) and Representations of the Island in Caribbean Literature: Caribbean Women Redefine their Homelands (2009). She also coordinated a special issue of Nouvelles études francophones on Gisèle Pineau’s work (2012).
Karen McPherson is Professor of French at the University of Oregon, USA. She is the author of two critical monographs: Incriminations: Guilty Women/Telling Stories (1994) and Archaeologies of an Uncertain Future: Recent Generations of Canadian Women Writing (2006). She is also a poet and literary translator.
Summary
The essays in this volume provide an overview and critical account of prevalent trends and theoretical arguments informing current investigations into literary treatments of motherhood and aging. They explore how two key stages in women’s lives—maternity and old age—are narrated and defined in fictions and autobiographical writings by contemporary French and francophone women. Through close readings of Maryse Condé, Hélène Cixous, Zahia Rahmani, Linda Lê, Pierrette Fleutieux, and Michèle Sarde, among others, these essays examine related topics such as dispossession, female friendship, and women’s relationships with their mothers. By adopting a broad, synthetic approach to these two distinct and defining stages in women’s lives, this volume elucidates how these significant transitional moments set the stage for women’s evolving definitions (and interrogations) of their identities and roles.
